The epitaxial growth of CdTe on Si is currently being investigated as a means of generating an alternative substrate for the subsequent growth and processing of HgCdTe based infrared detecting devices. The most favorable orientation for the growth of high-quality HgCdTe is CdTe (111)B, which has been demonstrated to be grown on miscut Si (001) substrates with very high quality . However, twinning islands and multiple domains are present at the nucleation stage, which has a detrimental effect on the device properties.
An alternative approach, which has the potential to overcome the multiple domain problems in the nucleation stage, is to grow CdTe (111) B on Si (111) substrates. However, previous reports have shown that the direct growth of CdTe onto Si (111) results in an A-polarity for the films . In an attempt to overcome this limitation, passivation of the substrate surface has been investigated.