Molecular Beam Epitaxy of Homogeneous Topological HgTe on Doped InAs Substrate

Abstract HgTe has been considered to be one of the most versatile topological materials. Depending on the in‐plane strain, Weyl and Dirac semi‐metal, as well as topological insulator phases, are feasible. Here, for the first time it is reported, that an InAs:S substrate promotes an initial 2D growth of a ZnTe thin layer and subsequent high crystalline quality ZnTe/CdTe superlattices serve as a smooth and continuous virtual substrate for the growth of (Cd,Hg)Te/HgTe/(Cd,Hg)Te heterostructures with unstrained quantum well HgTe (topological insulator) and compressively strained bulk HgTe (Weyl semimetal) by molecular beam epitaxy. Compared with the superlattices previously grown on GaAs substrates, the quantum well and bulk heterostructures exhibit homogeneous surfaces with root mean square roughnesses of 0.88–0.93 nm, which is three times lower than those observed for 3D islands (2.7–3.4 nm) on GaAs substrates. Additionally, magnetotransport measurements confirm high electronic quality and demonstrate that the S‐doped InAs substrate can be used as an effective back gate. These results manifest a (big) step forward toward the improvement of micro‐ and nanometer‐sized top‐ and back‐gated device fabrication on topological materials.