High mobility holes in a strained Ge quantum well grown on a thin and relaxed Si0.4Ge0.6/LT-Si0.4Ge0.6/Si(001) virtual

Epitaxial growth of a compressively strained Ge quantum well (QW) on an ultrathin, 345 nm thick, Si0.4Ge0.6/LT-Si0.4Ge0.6/Si(001) virtual substrate (VS) has been demonstrated. The VS, grown with a low temperature Si0.4Ge0.6 seed layer on a Si(001) substrate, is found to be fully relaxed and the Ge QW is fully strained. The temperature dependence of Hall mobility and carrier density clearly indicates a two-dimensional hole gas in the Ge QW. At room temperature, which is more relevant for electronic devices applications, the samples show a very high Hall mobility of 1235 cm2 V−1 s−1 at a carrier density of 2.36×1012 cm−2

Self-Consistent Electron Subbands of Gaas/Algaas Heterostructure in Magnetic Fields Parallel to the Interface

The effect of strong magnetic fields parallel to GaAs/AlGaAs interface on the subband structure of a 2D electron layer is ivestigated theoretically. The system with two levels occupied in zero magnetic field is considered and the magnetic field induced depletion of the second subband is studied. The confining potential and the electron dispersion relations are calculated self-consistently, the electron- electron interaction is taken into account in the Hartree approximation.Comment: written in LaTeX, 8 pages, 4 figs. available on request from [email protected]

Reverse graded relaxed buffers for high Ge content SiGe virtual substrates

An innovative approach is proposed for epitaxial growth of high Ge content, relaxed Si1−xGex buffer layers on a Si(001) substrate. The advantages of the technique are demonstrated by growing such structures via chemical vapor deposition and their characterization. Relaxed Ge is first grown on the substrate followed by the reverse grading approach to reach a final buffer composition of 0.78. The optimized buffer structure is only 2.8 µm thick and demonstrates a low surface threading dislocation density of 4×106 cm−2, with a surface roughness of 2.6 nm. The buffers demonstrate a relaxation of up to 107%

Composite fermions in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect: Transport at finite wavevector

We consider the conductivity tensor for composite fermions in a close to half-filled Landau band in the temperature regime where the scattering off the potential and the trapped gauge field of random impurities dominates. The Boltzmann equation approach is employed to calculate the quasiclassical transport properties at finite effective magnetic field, wavevector and frequency. We present an exact solution of the kinetic equation for all parameter regimes. Our results allow a consistent description of recently observed surface acoustic wave resonances and other findings.Comment: REVTEX, 4 pages, 1 figur

Misfit strain relaxation and dislocation formation in supercritical strained silicon on virtual substrates

Relaxation of strained silicon on 20% linear graded virtual substrates was quantified using high resolution x-ray diffraction and a defect etching technique. The thickness of strained silicon was varied between 10 and 180 nm. Relaxation was observed in layers below the critical thickness but increased to only 2% relaxation in the thickest layers even with annealings up to 950 °C. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy revealed stacking faults present in layers thicker than 25 nm, and nucleated 90° Shockley partial dislocations forming microtwins in the thickest layer. These features are implicated in the impediment of the relaxation process

High-frequency performance of Schottky source/drain silicon pMOS devices

A radio-frequency performance of 85-nm gate-length p-type Schottky barrier (SB) with PtSi source/drain materials is investigated. The impact of silicidation annealing temperature on the high-frequency behavior of SB MOSFETs is analyzed using an extrinsic small-signal equivalent circuit. It is demonstrated that the current drive and the gate transconductance strongly depend on the silicidation anneal temperature, whereas the unity-gain cutoff frequency of the measured devices remains nearly unchanged

Relaxation of strained silicon on Si0.5Ge0.5 virtual substrates

Strain relaxation has been studied in tensile strained silicon layers grown on Si0.5Ge0.5 virtual substrates, for layers many times the critical thickness, using high resolution x-ray diffraction. Layers up to 30 nm thick were found to relax less than 2% by the glide of preexisting 60° dislocations. Relaxation is limited because many of these dislocations dissociate into extended stacking faults that impede the dislocation glide. For thicker layers, nucleated microtwins were observed, which significantly increased relaxation to 14%. All these tensile strained layers are found to be much more stable than layers with comparable compressive strain

Application of Bryan's algorithm to the mobility spectrum analysis of semiconductor devices

A powerful method for mobility spectrum analysis is presented, based on Bryan's maximum entropy algorithm. The Bayesian analysis central to Bryan's algorithm ensures that we avoid overfitting of data, resulting in a physically reasonable solution. The algorithm is fast, and allows the analysis of large quantities of data, removing the bias of data selection inherent in all previous techniques. Existing mobility spectrum analysis systems are reviewed, and the performance of the Bryan's algorithm mobility spectrum (BAMS) approach is demonstrated using synthetic data sets. Analysis of experimental data is briefly discussed. We find that BAMS performs well compared to existing mobility spectrum methods

Complex quantum transport in a modulation doped strained Ge quantum well heterostructure with a high mobility 2D hole gas

The complex quantum transport of a strained Ge quantum well (QW) modulation doped heterostructure with two types of mobile carriers has been observed. The two dimensional hole gas (2DHG) in the Ge QW exhibits an exceptionally high mobility of 780 000 cm2/Vs at temperatures below 10 K. Through analysis of Shubnikov de-Haas oscillations in the magnetoresistance of this 2DHG below 2 K, the hole effective mass is found to be 0.065 m0. Anomalous conductance peaks are observed at higher fields which deviate from standard Shubnikov de-Haas and quantum Hall effect behaviour due to conduction via multiple carrier types. Despite this complex behaviour, analysis using a transport model with two conductive channels explains this behaviour and allows key physical parameters such as the carrier effective mass, transport, and quantum lifetimes and conductivity of the electrically active layers to be extracted. This finding is important for electronic device applications, since inclusion of highly doped interlayers which are electrically active, for enhancement of, for example, room temperature carrier mobility, does not prevent analysis of quantum transport in a QW

Ohmic contacts to n-type germanium with low specific contact resistivity

A low temperature nickel process has been developed that produces Ohmic contacts to n-type germanium with specific contact resistivities down to (2.3 ± 1.8) x10<sup>-7</sup> Ω-cm<sup>2</sup> for anneal temperatures of 340 degC. The low contact resistivity is attributed to the low resistivity NiGe phase which was identified using electron diffraction in a transmission electron microscope. Electrical results indicate that the linear Ohmic behaviour of the contact is attributed to quantum mechanical tunnelling through the Schottky barrier formed between the NiGe alloy and the heavily doped n-Ge.<p></p&gt