Method for the preparation of epitaxial films of mercury cadmium telluride

In accordance with the general concept of this invention, it has been found that high quality epitaxial films of (Hg,Cd)Te suitable for use as infrared detectors can be grown onto cadmium telluride substrates using a double barrel reactor and the technique of passing a hydrogen halide gas over separate CdTe and HgTe2 vaporizeable sources maintained at separate and distinct temperatures in the separate barrels of the reactor. The primary object of this invention is to provide a novel method for growing epitaxial films of (Hg,Cd)Te that possess a uniform gradient compositional content and are relatively free from defects. Another object of this invention is to grow epitaxial films of (Hg,Cd)Te onto a suitable cadmium telluride substrate. Still another object of this invention is to provide a novel method of depositing a (Hg,Cd)Te film by vapor phase epitaxy in which two distinct and separate vaporizable sources of reactant material are maintained at different temperatures and used in conjunction with a hydrogen halide reactant gas during the deposition and formation of the film.