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Published May 1, 1992 | Published
Journal Article Open

Structural characterization of Si(m)Ge(n) strained layer superlattices

Abstract

SimGen strained layer superlattice (SLS) structures were grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GexSi1-x buffer layers on <100> Si substrates to determine the effects of buffer layer composition, SLS thickness ratio, and superlattice periodicity, on the overall quality of these structures. X-ray diffraction methods were used to determine how closely actual periodicities and compositions met targeted values, and to evaluate the quality of these samples. In most instances the as-grown structures matched the targeted values to within 10%, though in some instances deviations of 20-25% in either the period or composition were observed. The quality of the SLS structures was greatly dependent on the composition of the buffer layer on which it was grown. SimGen SLS structures grown on Si- and Ge-rich buffer layers were of much higher quality than SimGem SLSs grown on Ge0.50Si0.50 layers, but the x-ray rocking curves of the SimGen samples indicated that they were far from perfect and contained moderate levels of defects. These results were confirmed by cross sectional transmission electron microscopy, which showed that the SimGem structures contained significant numbers of dislocations and that the layers were nonuniform in thickness and wavy in appearance. SimGen structures, however, displayed fewer defects but some dislocations and nonparallelism of layers were still observed.

Additional Information

© 1992 American Institute of Physics. Received 18 October 1991; accepted for publication 29 January 1992. This work was supported in part by the Aerospace Sponsored Research Program. The work at the California Institute of Technology is supported by the National Science Foundation Materials Research Group Program Grant DMR-88 11795. The work at the University of California is supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation and the Army Research Office. The authors wish to thank W. S. Liu and M-A. Nicolet for the RBS analyses.

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August 22, 2023
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