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Cadmium telluride (CdTe) high purity, bulk, crystal ingots doped with phosphorus were grown by the vertical Bridgman melt growth technique to understand and improve dopant solubility and activation. Large net carrier densities have been reproducibly obtained from as-grown ingots, indicating successful incorporation of dopants into the lattice. However, net carrier density values are orders of magnitude lower than the solubility of P in CdTe as reported in literature, 1018/cm3 to 1019/cm3 [J. H. Greenberg, J. Cryst. Growth 161, 1–11 (1996) and R. B. Hall and H. H. Woodbury, J. Appl. Phys. 39(12), 5361–5365 (1968)], despite comparable starting charge dopant densities. Growth conditions, such as melt stoichiometry and post growth cooling, are shown to have significant impacts on dopant solubility. This study demonstrates that a significant portion of the dopant becomes incorporated into second phase defects as compounds of cadmium and phosphorous, such as cadmium phosphide, which inhibits dopant incorporation into the lattice and limits maximum attainable net carrier density in bulk crystals. Here, we present an extensive study on the characteristics of these second phase defects in relation to their composition and formation kinetics while providing a pathway to minimize their formation and enhance solubility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We applied time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy based on free carrier absorption and light diffraction on a transient grating for direct measurements of the carrier lifetime and diffusion coefficient D in high-resistivity single crystal CdTe (codoped with In and Er). The bulk carrier lifetime τ decreased from 670 ± 50 ns to 60 ± 10 ns with increase of excess carrier density N from 1016 to 5 x 1018 cm-3 due to the excitation-dependent radiative recombination rate. In this N range, the carrier diffusion length dropped from 14 µm to 6 µm due to lifetime decrease. Modeling of in-depth (axial) and in-plane (lateral) carrier diffusion provided the value of surface recombination velocity S = 6 x 105 cm/s for the untreated surface. At even higher excitations, in the 1019-3 x 1020 cm-3 density range, D increase from 5 to 20 cm²/s due to carrier degeneracy was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]