Atomic Layer Epitaxy of Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors

At the time being, there is evidently a sharp increase of interest in growth of low-dimensional thin-film structures of semiconducting compounds by the Atomic Layer Epitaxy (ALE) method. Many of the wide-gap II-VI compounds can be grown from elemental source materials by an ALE mode related to Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE). This paper concentrates on recent ALE work involving ZnSe- and CdTe- derived diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) where a fraction of Zn or Cd is substituted by Mn atoms. It shows that Zn1-xMnxSe/ZnSe and Cd1-xMnxTe/CdTe DMS structures with abrupt interfaces and high structural perfection can be produced at low growth temperatures by the ALE method.