Andrea Scaccabarozzi

Engineered Coalescence by Annealing 3D Ge Microstructures into High-Quality Suspended Layers on Si.

The move from dimensional to functional scaling in microelectronics has led to renewed interest toward integration of Ge on Si. In this work, simulation-driven experiments leading to high-quality suspended Ge films on Si pillars are reported. Starting from an array of micrometric Ge crystals, the film is obtained by exploiting their temperature-driven coalescence across nanometric gaps. The merging process is simulated by means of a suitable surface-diffusion model within a phase-field approach. The successful comparison between experimental and simulated data demonstrates that the morphological evolution is driven purely by the lowering of surface-curvature gradients. This allows for fine control over the final morphology to be attained. At fixed annealing time and temperature, perfectly merged films are obtained from Ge crystals grown at low temperature (450 °C), whereas some void regions still persist for crystals grown at higher temperature (500 °C) due to their different initial morphology. The latter condition, however, looks very promising for possible applications. Indeed, scanning tunneling electron microscopy and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy analyses show that, at least during the first stages of merging, the developing film is free from threading dislocations. The present findings, thus, introduce a promising path to integrate Ge layers on Si with a low dislocation density.

Monolithic integration of optical grade GaAs on Si (001) substrates deeply patterned at a micron scale

Dense arrays of micrometric crystals, with areal filling up to 93%, are obtained by depositing GaAs in a mask-less molecular beam epitaxy process onto Si substrates. The substrates are patterned into tall, micron sized pillars. Faceted high aspect ratio GaAs crystals are achieved by tuning the Ga adatom for short surface diffusion lengths. The crystals exhibit bulk-like optical quality due to defect termination at the sidewalls. Simultaneously, the thermal strain induced by different thermal expansion parameters of GaAs and Si is fully relieved. This opens the route to thick film applications without crack formation and wafer bowing.

Kinetic growth mode of epitaxial GaAs on Si(001) micro-pillars

Three-dimensional, epitaxial GaAs crystals are fabricated on micro-pillars patterned into Si(001) substrates by exploiting kinetically controlled growth conditions in Molecular Beam Epitaxy. The evolution of crystal morphology during growth is assessed by considering samples with increasing GaAs deposit thickness. Experimental results are interpreted by a kinetic growth model, which takes into account the fundamental aspects of the growth and mutual deposition flux shielding between neighboring crystals. Different substrate pattern geometries with dissimilar lateral sizes and periodicities of the Si micro-pillars are considered and self-similar crystal structures are recognized. It is demonstrated that the top faceting of the GaAs crystals is tunable, which can pave the way to locally engineer compound semiconductor quantum structures on Si(001) substrates.

Ebic Investigation of the Recombination at the Edges of GaAs Solar Cells

Intermediate band photovoltaics is one of the so-called third generation photovoltaic device designs proposed to increase the efficiency of solar cells. It involves the creation of an intermediate band (IB) inside a semiconductor band gap, that can allow sub-bandgap photon absorption without degrading the output voltage of the device. One possibility to make an IB is through a periodic array of semiconductor quantum dots embedded in a higher bandgap material acting as a barrier. The barrier (matrix) material will be a traditional p-n or p-i-n junction solar cell.