Author : Colleen Shang Fenrich
Release : 2018
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Strain Engineering Germanium-tin in Group IV Photonics by : Colleen Shang Fenrich
Download or read book Strain Engineering Germanium-tin in Group IV Photonics written by Colleen Shang Fenrich. This book was released on 2018. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scaling of technology nodes to smaller length scales has enabled unprecedented growth for silicon integrated circuits (IC). The reduction of critical feature dimensions has allowed larger densities of integrated components and improved performance on the device level. At the same time, however, scaling has presented increasing challenges for the performance of global electrical interconnects, which comprise the longest wire lengths on a chip. One solution to overcoming the limitations of electrical interconnect technology is the integration of optical interconnects. While optical communications has already been employed on much larger length scales, the application of optical interconnects for chip-to-chip and on-chip communications has yet to be realized. In the IC industry, the silicon (Si) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) platform has unified and enabled large-scale integration, but Si performs poorly as an active optical material due to its indirect band gap. As a result, an integrated Si laser has remained elusive in Si photonics, although the ability to leverage this platform for photonic integration has the potential to achieve low cost and high-throughput manufacturing, while maintaining compatibility with CMOS electronics. Developing a tunable direct band gap group IV semiconductor can instead be achieved using the binary germanium-tin system. The incorporation of Sn into the Ge crystal reduces the energy difference between the direct and indirect conduction band minima. A major challenge of the germanium-tin system is lattice mismatch with respect to Si or Ge-buffered Si substrates. Significant compressive strain arises from the coherent epitaxial growth of germanium-tin on these substrates, which inhibits the onset of the fundamental direct gap. This dissertation explores methods of strain engineering pseudomorphic germanium-tin epitaxy to relieve lattice mismatch strain that inhibits the onset of the fundamental direct band gap.
