Molecular Beam Epitaxy of II-VI Based Heterostructures

The nonequilibrium growth technique of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has provided for the fabrication and investigation of a multitude of novel layered heterostructures based on II-VI compound semiconductors. The ability to grow epitaxial metastable magnetic and semimagnetic semiconductors layered with conventional II-VI semiconductors has resulted in structures which, for example, exhibit frustrated antiferromagnetism, and a wide wavelength tunability due to selftrapping of excitons in ZnTe-containing layered structures and due to extremely large (≈ 1 eV) quantum shifts of light emission from MnTe/CdTe superlattice structures. In addition, the control in the stoichiometry of surfaces and the composition of molecular beams used in the MBE growth technique has allowed for the fabrication of very advanced heterostructures which have combined the II-VI and III-V families of compound semiconductors. The work which will be described in the following review represents a very small sampling of the many important results achieved in the field of II-VI based heterostructures. The topics have been selected to illustrate and provide an example of the utility of MBE and the potential of "engineered" II-VI heterostructures and quantum wells.