The band gap of Hg1−xMgxTe grown by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract We report on the epitaxial growth and the characterization of Hg 1− x Mg x Te on (001), (111)B and (112)B Cd 0.96 Zn 0.04 Te substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. The band gap of this ternary compound is variable from −0.15 up to 3.49 eV at room temperature by changing the composition. At a fixed Mg concentration the band gap depends on the substrate orientation and additionally on the Hg to Te flux ratio. Possible reasons for this behavior such as phase separation, clustering or atomic ordering will be discussed.