High pressure x-ray diffraction and extended x-ray absorption fine structure studies on ternary alloy Zn1-xBexSe

The ternary semiconductor alloy Zn1-xBexSe has been studied under high pressure by x-ray diffraction and extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) at the Zn and Se K-edge in order to determine the bulk and bond-specific elastic properties. Our measurements on samples with x = 0.06-0.55 show pressure induced phase transformation from zinc blende to NaCl. The phase transformation pressure increases linearly with x. Murnaghan equation of state fitting to the data yields the unit cell volume at ambient pressure and bulk modulus, both of which follow the Vegard's law. Nearest neighbor bond distances derived from EXAFS do not show sharp phase transition except for x=0.06. Bond modulus derived for the Zn-Se bonds shows them to be apparently stiffer than the bulk alloy, which is nontrivial. This tendency increases with increasing x and a strong positive bowing from the Vegard's law is observed. We attribute the observed anomalies to the contrastingly different properties of the two components ZnSe and BeSe. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3493850]