Structural properties of relaxed Ge buffer layers on Si(001) : effect of layer thickness and low temperature Si initial buffer

• We have used the strain sensitive tool two-dimensional reciprocal space mapping (2D-RSM) and high resolution rocking curves (HR-RC) to assess the effect of the layer thickness and the influence of low temperature Si buffer on the properties of fully relaxed Ge on Si (0 0 1). The samples were grown by chemical vapor deposition in an ASM commercial reactor. As complementary measurements we have employed secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) for chemical analysis, cross sectional transmission electron microscopy for quality assessment, and finally atomic force microscopy (AFM) for investigating the surface roughness. The investigated samples have a thickness ranging from 0.25 to 5.0 mum. In addition and for a 5.0 mum thick Ge layer, an initial low temperature Si (LT-Si) template was grown before the Ge epitaxy. The results indicate that high quality fully relaxed Ge layers have been achieved using the adopted growth procedure. Most of the improvement in crystalline quality was observed for Ge layers with thickness up to 1.5 mum. Above this thickness the observed crystalline quality improvement was negligible. The LT-Si buffer observed to be disadvantageous for pure relaxed Ge growth.

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