TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF THE HGTE CDTE VALENCE-BAND OFFSET/

We report here on a temperature dependent magneto-optical investigatio n of the valence band offset between HgTe and CdTe. The H1-E1 gap and the conduction band edge mass of various HgTe-(HgCd)Te superlattices w ere studied in a wide regime from liquid helium to nearly room tempera ture. With an offset of 550 meV which was determined previously at liq uid helium temperatures and the temperature dependence of the Gamma(6) -Gamma(8) gap of bulk Hg1-xCdxTe, a nearly perfect description of the experimental data was obtained. Our experiment provides strong evidenc e that a temperature dependence of the band offset can essentially be neglected.