Temperature,injection level,and frequency dependences of the luminescence in lightly - and heavily-doped CdTe:In

The temperature dependence, injection level dependence, and modulation frequency response of cathodoluminescence have been measured in Te-rich CdTe:In for materials with In concentrations ranging from 3 × 10¹⁵cm^?3 to 1 × 10¹⁸cm^?3. In lightly-doped material, the 80 K luminescence shows sharp band-edge emission near 1.57 eV and a broad impurity-defect band near 1.4 eV. As temperature increases, the 1.4 eV band quenches out, leaving only the band-edge emission. In heavily-doped material, the band- edge emission is absent and the 80 K luminescence shows only the 1.4 eV band. As the temperature increases from 80 K to 300 K, the 1.4 eV band does not quench out but rather undergoes a complex evolution into a long tail on the band-edge emission which begins to appear at approximately 140 K. At a temperature of 200 K, where the luminescence of the heavily-doped material consists of a broad but structured band approximately 0.2 eV in width, frequency response measurements indicate that band-to-band transitions contribute to the high-energy part of the broad luminescence while the remainder of the band results from slower transitions. The frequency and temperature dependences suggest that the luminescence involves an impurity level that has merged with a band edge at an In concentration of $\text{1 × 10}{}^{18}\text{cm}{}^3$. We interpret this behavior as suggesting that the 1.4 eV luminescence in Te-rich CdTe:In results from a partially-forbidden transition between conduction band and a deep acceptor level rather than from an intracenter type of transition.