Observation of indium-vacancy and indium-hydrogen interactions in Hg_1−xCd_xTe

Abstract

We have used a nuclear hyperfine technique, perturbed γγ angular correlation (PAC), to study the interactions between¹¹¹In and native defects and impurities in Hg_1−xCd_xTe. The PAC technique uses the quadrupole interaction of¹¹¹In with local electric field gradients to characterize the local environment of this donor dopant. We observed that when In was diffused into a bulk or thin film sample of Hg_1−xCd_xTe (x=0.21 and x=0.3) at 350°C and the sample was slow cooled, the In occupied sites with near-cubic symmetry, presumably the substitutional metal site. However, when the sample was quenched, a fraction of the In was incorporated into defects characterized by quadrupole interaction strengthsv _Q1 andv _Q2 and asymmetries of ν₁=ν₂=0.08. These defects are attributed to the trapping of a metal vacancy at a next-nearest neighbor site to the In atom. The introduction of hydrogen by boiling the samples in distilled water for >4h eliminated the previously observed PAC signals and created defects characterized byv _Q3=35 MHz, ν₃ <0.1 andv _Q4=MHz, ν₄ <0.1. These defects are attributed to the decoration of the In-V_Hg complex by a hydrogen atom. Hall effect measurements showed that hydrogenation increased the hole concentration in p-type quenched samples and even converted n-type indium-doped samples to p-type. A possible model for hydrogen incorporation which includes self-compensation by vacancy creation is suggested.