Raman investigation of optical phonons in the ion implanted Hg1−xCdxTe

Abstract Raman scattering is studied here for Hg 1−x Cd x Te (x = 0.3) samples implanted with 180-keV of B 11 ions with various doses up to 1 × 10 15 cm −2 . Considering disorder in the implanted HgCdTe material, the correlation length of Raman active optical phonons is determined as a short range order in the nanocrystals. Phonon softening and asymmetric broadening are investigated for HgTe like LO and TO phonon modes in the Raman spectrum while CdTe like modes almost disappeared for the dose greater than 5 × 10 13 cm −2 . Disorder is measured quantitatively for wide ranges of doses on the basis of phonon confinement model. Nanostructures of the near-surface implantation-induced damage layer are known to consist of a mixture of amorphous HgCdTe and its nanocrystals. A significant reduction of the nanocrystallites size is reported here with increasing dose i.e. L = 34–46 A 0 at dose of 1 × 10 15 cm −2 .