Formation of II-VI nanostructures on vicinal surfaces

We report on the peculiar aspects of the growth of CdTe by atomic layer epitaxy compared to the one developed for other compound semiconductors. It is self-organized from two points of view, the amount of material deposited by ALE cycle, namely 0.5 ML/cycle for substrate temperatures around 260 degrees C and the geometry of the deposited CdTe which tends to form preferentially square islands with [100] edges. Using these results, we demonstrate the possibility of growing tilted superlattices made out of CdTe and MnTe. However, the lateral ordering created by this structure is strongly limited by two effects, the Cd/Mn atomic exchange and the step array disorder. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.