Possibility of growing high quality very thin single CdTe crystals directly on mica

Very thin CdTe crystals were grown on cleaved surfaces of (001)-mica (muscovite) substrate by a hot wall technique, and zincblende-type single-crystal films oriented on the (110)-plane were obtained. The thickness of the him investigated here is about 300 nm. Films obtained under optimized growth conditions exhibited a sharp exciton absorption line at low temperatures, showing that the crystal was of high quality. This fact may result from a new type of growth owing to ionic characteristics at the surface of the (001)-mica substrate. Analysis by atomic force microscopy revealed an extremely smooth surface with a root-mean-square roughness of 2 nm over a 1 mu m(2) area.