25-08-2017, 09:32 PM
Polycrystalline Germanium Enables Near-IR Photodetectors Integrated with Silicon CMOS Electronics
ABSTRACT
In the past two decades, SiGe has been the material of choice for the development of near-IR (0.7 to 2 microns)
optoelectronic devices based on silicon, and several groups have developed high-performance near-IR photodetectors on Si
substrates. Nevertheless, the gap between engineering a good device and achieving its monolithic integration with very large
scale integrated electronics on Si was not overcome until recently. Following the pioneering work of R. People and T.P.
Pearsall, SiGe (i.e., alloys, multilayers. superlattices, etc., that combine both of these group-IV semiconductors) has been an
alternative to III-V compounds for the fabrication of near-IR optoelectronic devices monolithically integrated with silicon.
Significant research efforts directed at Si-based sources, modulators and detectors, however, hit performance limitations both
because of centrosymmetry and because of the indirect nature of band-to-band transitions in Ge. Moreover, silicon and
germanium exhibit a lattice mismatch of approximately 4 percent.
ABSTRACT
In the past two decades, SiGe has been the material of choice for the development of near-IR (0.7 to 2 microns)
optoelectronic devices based on silicon, and several groups have developed high-performance near-IR photodetectors on Si
substrates. Nevertheless, the gap between engineering a good device and achieving its monolithic integration with very large
scale integrated electronics on Si was not overcome until recently. Following the pioneering work of R. People and T.P.
Pearsall, SiGe (i.e., alloys, multilayers. superlattices, etc., that combine both of these group-IV semiconductors) has been an
alternative to III-V compounds for the fabrication of near-IR optoelectronic devices monolithically integrated with silicon.
Significant research efforts directed at Si-based sources, modulators and detectors, however, hit performance limitations both
because of centrosymmetry and because of the indirect nature of band-to-band transitions in Ge. Moreover, silicon and
germanium exhibit a lattice mismatch of approximately 4 percent.