ZnSe single crystal growth using vapor transport technique

Quasi-phase matched (QPM) non-linear optical materials are promising candidates for producing tunable and powerful laser sources in the mid-infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) region, essential for applications such as military infrared countermeasures. Recent development of oriented patterned (OP ) GaAs has been successful for application for frequency conversion based on QPM. However, the intrinsic materials properties of GaAs limit OP-GaAs. The two primary limitations are the 1.42 eV direct band gap at room temperature and strong absorption at wavelengths longer than 15 ?m. Zinc Selenide has a wider band gap, a modest nonlinear coefficient, and a wide transparency which are attractive for infrared countermeasure applications. The major obstacle to producing OP-ZnSe has been the lack of high-quality wafer scale single crystal substrates, which are required for fabrication of OP-ZnSe templates. ZnSe does not melt under normal pressure, as a result it is difficult to grow ZnSe crystal by the traditional melt growth techniques such Bridgman and Czochralski method. RMD is proposing to investigate a high quality ZnSe (100) oriented crystal growth method combining both PVT and CVT techniques. High quality crystalline substrate will be produced using lattice matched single crystalline substrates as template.