Cd and Te Dislocations in CdTe

Abstract

It seems probable that two types of 60° edge dislocation exist in CdTe because of the geometrical polarity. In fact, such types of dislocations can be made visible as different etch pit figures with two kinds of etches. Two types of bendings were applied for the introduction of either excess‐Cd or excess‐Te dislocations. On each bending two types of dislocations were simultaneously brought about with a minimum in density near the neutral plane. However, annealing at high temperature resulted in a uniform distribution of dislocations and a polygonization of the crystal. Furthermore, it was found that dislocations of the correct sign, necessary to produce the required configuration of bending, were predominantly conserved while unexpected dislocations were thermally annihilated during the polygonization process.