Reactive epitaxy of [001] europium on [001] CdTe

Europium has been epitaxially grown on [001] CdTe by molecular beam epitaxy. It has been shown that an intermediate layer, likely EuTe with a NaCl‐type structure, was formed prior to the growth of pure europium. It was demonstrated by ion channeling experiments and reflection high energy electron diffraction observations that the [001] bcc europium axis was parallel to [001] of CdTe and that the [110] europium direction was parallel to the [100] one in CdTe. The observed relationship corresponds to an extremely low mismatch. Further growth of a [001] CdTe overlayer onto europium was also demonstrated.