Misfit accommodation in a lattice-mismatched HgTe-CdTe superlattice/HgCdTe heterostructure grown by molecular beam epitaxy

We report an x-ray diffraction study of a HgTe-CdTe superlattice (SL)/HgCdTe heterostructure grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The diffraction results are used to place an upper bound on the misfit accommodation at the lattice-mismatched SL/HgCdTe interface. The misfit accommodation at the heterointerface is at least an order of magnitude less than that predicted by equilibrium misfit theory. It appears that the low substrate temperature used in MBE HgCdTe growth imposes a kinetic barrier to misfit accommodation.