Tensile Strained Ge Layers Obtained via a Si-CMOS Compatible Approach

Although rapid advances in Si photonics over the last decade has enabled mass production of higher functionality and lower cost photonic components (such as waveguides, couplers, modulators, photodetectors, etc..) integrated with both digital and analog circuitry in silicon complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology (Si-CMOS), an efficient electrically-pumped light emitter integrated in the Si-CMOS has so far been considered the Holy Grail of the monolithic electronics-photonics integration

Strain analysis in SiN/Ge microstructures obtained via Si-complementary metal oxide semiconductor compatible approach

We have analyzed the strain distribution and the photoluminescence in Ge microstructures fabricated by means of a Si-CMOS compatible method. The tensile strain in the Ge microstructures is obtained by using a SiN stressor layer. Different shapes of microstructure, allowing the Ge layers to freely expand into one, two, or three dimensions, resulted in different strain distribution profiles. Maximal equivalent biaxial tensile strain values up to ~0.8% have been measured. Room temperature photoluminescence emission has been observed and attributed to direct-band gap recombination spectrally shifted by tensile strai