The development of materials for optical thin film application is essential to progress in fields such as optical data storage and signal processing. Samarium sulfide (SmS) thin films were prepared by reactive evaporation of samarium in hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). These displayed optical switching properties despite the presence of large amounts of carbon and oxygen. They are therefore potentially useful for data storage. The semiconductor to metal phase transition was characterized by x-ray diffraction and spectrophotometry. The observed optical response was modelled by a Bruggeman effective medium calculation. Success with this analysis suggests it as a means for predicting performance in subsequent applications. Zinc sulfide (ZnS) thin films were prepared by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Implimentation of an H₂S treated silicon surface provided good chemical bond match in addition to a good lattice match. Atomic layer epitaxy was unsuccessfully explored as a means to grow ZnS from zinc and H₂S reactants, therefore other reactants are proposed. Both the MBE and ALE work is directed at the long term goals of producing p-type ZnS, which is suitable for semiconductor lasing at short wavelengths, and high quality SmS thin films.
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