BAND-STRUCTURE ENGINEERING AND DOPING OF WIDE-GAP II-VI SUPERLATTICES

It is shown that the free hole concentration for nitrogen doped ZnSe/ZnTe short period superlattices with a given average Te content of 15% can be increased from 1016 to 1019cm-3 by just increasing the SL period from 2.5 to 4.5 nm. This behavior can be understood in terms of a model that assumes a pinning of the Fermi level at an energetic position that is fixed with respect to the vacuum level. The model can be applied to other II-VI superlattices, and alternative cladding layers for blue laser diodes are proposed that should exhibit significantly higher p-doping levels than the currently used ZnMgSSe claddings.© 1995 American Institute of Physics.