Crystal growth of PbTe doped with PbI₂ by the physical transport method

A physical vapor transport technique was performed to grow an n-type PbTe single crystal heavily doped with PbI₂. The boules obtained repeatedly by this transport were hemispheres with a dimension of 19 mm in diameter. Laue back-reflection technique confirmed that the as-grown boules formed into several large crystal grains with a mean size of 5×5×15 mm³. One of the boules was a single crystal. The Hall mobility and lattice thermal conductivity of the single crystal at room temperature were 1.23×10^-1 m²/V s and 0.9 W/(mK), and these were 1.13 and 1.80 times larger than ones of the starting material, which suggested that scattering of electrons and phonons at lattice imperfections are effectively reduced by the transport. It was found that a high-quality large-scale single crystal with a high carrier concentration can successfully be grown by the physical vapor transport.