Photoluminescence study of strong interdiffusion in CdTe/CdMnTe quantum wells induced by rapid thermal annealing

Abstract
Thermally induced interdiffusion in CdTe/CdMnTe quantum wells was investigated by photoluminescence spectroscopy. The single quantum well structures were grown by molecular beam epitaxy annealed by rapid thermal annealing for 1 min at temperatures between 380 and 520 °C. A blue shift close to the barrier energy was observed indicating an almost perfect interdiffusion between the well and the barrier material. We derive an activation energy of 2.8 eV for the interdiffusion process from a Fickian diffusion model applied to our experiments.