Submicronic Laue diffraction to determine in-depth strain in very closely matched complex HgCdTe/CdZnTe heterostructures with a 10-5 resolution.

Cross-sectional submicronic Laue diffraction has been successfully applied to HgCdTe/CdZnTe heterostructures to provide accurate strain profiles from substrate to surface. Combined with chemical-sensitive techniques, this approach allows correlation of lattice-mismatch, interface compositional gradient and strain while isolating specific layer contributions which would otherwise be averaged using conventional X-ray diffraction. The submicronic spatial resolution allowed by the synchrotron white beam size is particularly suited to complex infrared detector designed structures such as dual-color detectors. The extreme strain resolution of 10-5 required for the very low lattice-mismatch system HgCdTe/CdZnTe is demonstrated.