Subband structure in the electric quantum limit for Hg1-xCdxTe

The electron subband structure in the electric quantum limit of the n-type inversion layer in narrow-band-gap semiconductors has been investigated by means of capacitance-spectroscopy, magnetoconductivity-oscillation, and cyclotron-resonance measurements on p-type Hg1-xCdxTe metal-insulator- semiconductor-structure samples. A method is presented to determine the subband structures, which depend on the inversion-layer electron concentration, directly from experimental data. The ground-state subband energy E0, Fermi level EF, effective mass m*, average depth of the inversion layer Z0, and the depletion-layer depth Zd for Hg1-xCdxTe, with x=0.234 and 0.21, are determined quantitatively from the experimental measurements by using this method.