Structural and semiconducting properties of ZnTe thin films galvanostatically grown onto monocrystalline InP substrate from TeCL ₄/DMSO solution

ZnTe thin films were galvanostatically electrodeposited onto (100) InP substrates from an electrolytic solution containing TeCl₄ dissolved in DMSO. Cyclic voltammetry in the dark was used to identify the process involved in the complex electrochemical reduction of the Te(IV) precursor. Quantitative analysis of energy dispersive x-ray analysis results indicated that the composition ratio (Zn:Te) was not possible to determine due the presence of a tellurium excess in the deposits. X-ray diffraction results revealed that the thin films obtained showed a preferred (200) orientation with cubic structure indicating the existence of an epitaxial grow along the (100) crysytalline planes of the InP substrate. The n-type character of the films was deduced from Mott-Schottky plots that also gave a donor density of 1.54 × 10 ⁺¹⁸ cnr^-3. From the optical absortion measurements a bandgap of 2.21 eV was obtained.