The effect of growth conditions on the stability of α-Sn films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on CdTe is studied. The growth conditions considered are substrate orientation, thickness, growth rate, and substrate temperature. The transition temperature from α-Sn to β-Sn, as determined by optical microscopy, is used as the measure of stability. It is shown that CdTe(110) is a somewhat better orientation than CdTe(100), and CdTe(111)B is totally unacceptable for the growth by molecular beam epitaxy of α-Sn films. The transition temperature from α-Sn to β-Sn shows a dependence on the total film thickness, with thinner films having a somewhat higher transition temperature than thicker. The quality of the films is the best when the growth rate is about 0.5 Å/s and the growth temperature is about 75 °C. Since the transition from α-Sn to β-Sn starts at defects in the film, improving the quality of the film by lowering the growth rate and raising the growth temperature raises the transition temperature.
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Reno et al. (1989) studied this question.