A theoretical and experimental study of the energy bandgap in MBE-grown Hg1-xCdxSe

Abstract Temperature-dependent infrared transmission spectroscopy has been applied to study the optical properties of Hg0.815Cd0.185Se thin film grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaSb (211)B substrate. Discrepancies were observed between the measured optical bandgaps and the calculated values based on the previously reported empirical expression for the energy bandgap E g x , T of Hg1-xCdxSe. A new empirical expression has been established based on ab initio calculations, and the results are shown to be in a good agreement with the experimental data of this study. By comparing both expressions with all of known experimental data for x≤0.354 from other studies over the temperature range of 0