Manganese telluride (MnTe), grown by the equilibrium methods, crystallizes in the hexagonal NiAs-type structure [1]. Until late 1980s, the cubic zinc-blende (zb) MnTe had been only considered as a hypothetical endpoint compound for the series of ternary magnetic alloys of zinc-blende structure (namely, Zn 1รx Mn x Te, Cd 1รx Mn x Te, and Hg 1รx Mn x Te), which belong to the so-called diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) [2].
MnTe in a cubic phase (zb-MnTe) has been obtained for the first time in 1989 by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [3]. Since then, remarkable progress in the crystal growth of zb-MnTe by the nonequilibrium methods was reached (e.g. [4][5][6][7]).
Numerous reports contained the experimental results concerning structural properties of zb-MnTe, performed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) (see e.g. [4][5][6][7]) or by both the XRD and neutron diffraction ([8,9] and references therein). Among the latter ones, of special importance seems the evidence of complex investigations of MBE-grown 'semibulk' zb-MnTe and Zn 1รx Mn x Te (0.695 < x < 1) as well as the MnTe/ZnTe superlattices carried out with use of neutron-and X-ray diffraction [8], which led to determine the effect of strain and Mn dilution on the antiferromagnetic properties of zb-MnTe and its derivative compounds.
On the contrary, the literature related to X-ray spectroscopy studies remains relatively poor. In fact, it is limited to the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) experiments [4,10,11], and particularly to the investigations of electronic structure of the principal core-levels, i.e. Mn 2p and Te 3d [10,11].
Lack of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) data for cubic mangenese telluride has motivated us to measure its X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectrum at the K-edge of Mn, in order to study partial density of states (DOS) in the conduction band and in the energy gap of zb-MnTe.
At this point we felt additionally encouraged by the earlier results of our group, which included the XANES data for K-edge of Mn in the Zn 1รx Mn x B (B = S, Se) diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) [12][13][14][15]-namely, the respective XANES spectrum of zb-MnTe could provide a completion of the experimental XAS evidence for the case of Mn bound to chalcogen atom (S, Se, Te) in a tetrahedral coordination of zinc-blende (and/or wurzite) structure.