Growth and Structural Characterization of Semiconducting Tin Telluride Thin Films by Novel Rapid Thermal Annealing Technique

Tin Telluride is a representative IV-VI compound semiconductor of narrow band gap with potential use in IR detector. Thin films of SnTe were grown by a novel, cost effective rapid thermal annealing (RTA) technique. For this, elemental layers of Sn and Te were deposited on a quartz substrate and then subjected to rapid thermal annealing at optimized temperature and duration. The required experimental set up was designed and fabricated. Formation of single phase formation of SnTe was confirmed from X-ray diffraction technique. The crystalline size were calculated. The duration and temperature of annealing were optimized. Further, the required excess Te composition for single phase stoichiometric SnTe film was also optimized. It has been shown that thin films of single phase SnTe can be grown by rapid thermal annealing