Deborah M. Paskiewicz

Direct-bandgap light-emitting germanium in tensilely strained nanomembranes

Silicon, germanium, and related alloys, which provide the leading materials platform of electronics, are extremely inefficient light emitters because of the indirect nature of their fundamental energy bandgap. This basic materials property has so far hindered the development of group-IV photonic active devices, including diode lasers, thereby significantly limiting our ability to integrate electronic and photonic functionalities at the chip level. Here we show that Ge nanomembranes (i.e., single-crystal sheets no more than a few tens of nanometers thick) can be used to overcome this materials limitation. Theoretical studies have predicted that tensile strain in Ge lowers the direct energy bandgap relative to the indirect one. We demonstrate that mechanically stressed nanomembranes allow for the introduction of sufficient biaxial tensile strain to transform Ge into a direct-bandgap material with strongly enhanced light-emission efficiency, capable of supporting population inversion as required for providing optical gain.

Fast flexible electronics with strained silicon nanomembranes

Fast flexible electronics operating at radio frequencies (>1 GHz) are more attractive than traditional flexible electronics because of their versatile capabilities, dramatic power savings when operating at reduced speed and broader spectrum of applications. Transferrable single-crystalline Si nanomembranes (SiNMs) are preferred to other materials for flexible electronics owing to their unique advantages. Further improvement of Si-based device speed implies significant technical and economic advantages. While the mobility of bulk Si can be enhanced using strain techniques, implementing these techniques into transferrable single-crystalline SiNMs has been challenging and not demonstrated. The past approach presents severe challenges to achieve effective doping and desired material topology. Here we demonstrate the combination of strained- NM-compatible doping techniques with self-sustained-strain sharing by applying a strain-sharing scheme between Si and SiGe multiple epitaxial layers, to create strained print-transferrable SiNMs. We demonstrate a new speed record of Si-based flexible electronics without using aggressively scaled critical device dimensions.

Tensilely strained germanium nanomembranes as infrared optical gain media.

The use of tensilely strained Ge nanomembranes as mid-infrared optical gain media is investigated. Biaxial tensile strain in Ge has the effect of lowering the direct energy bandgap relative to the fundamental indirect one, thereby increasing the internal quantum efficiency for light emission and allowing for the formation of population inversion, until at a strain of about 1.9% Ge is even converted into a direct-bandgap material. Gain calculations are presented showing that, already at strain levels of about 1.4% and above, Ge films can provide optical gain in the technologically important 2.1-2.5 μm spectral region, with transparency carrier densities that can be readily achieved under realistic pumping conditions. Mechanically stressed Ge nanomembranes capable of accommodating the required strain levels are developed and used to demonstrate strong strain-enhanced photoluminescence. A detailed analysis of the high-strain emission spectra also demonstrates that the nanomembranes can be pumped above transparency, and confirms the prediction that biaxial-strain levels in excess of only 1.4% are required to obtain significant population inversion.

Si/Ge Junctions Formed by Nanomembrane Bonding

We demonstrate the feasibility of fabricating heterojunctions of semiconductors with high mismatches in lattice constant and coefficient of thermal expansion by employing nanomembrane bonding. We investigate the structure of and electrical transport across the interface of a Si/Ge bilayer formed by direct, low-temperature hydrophobic bonding of a 200 nm thick monocrystalline Si(001) membrane to a bulk Ge(001) wafer. The membrane bond has an extremely high quality, with an interfacial region of ∼1 nm. No fracture or delamination is observed for temperature changes greater than 350 °C, despite the approximately 2:1 ratio of thermal-expansion coefficients. Both the Si and the Ge maintain a high degree of crystallinity. The junction is highly conductive. The nonlinear transport behavior is fit with a tunneling model, and the bonding behavior is explained with nanomembrane mechanics.

Defect-Free Single-Crystal SiGe: A New Material from Nanomembrane Strain Engineering

Many important materials cannot be grown as single crystals in bulk form because strain destroys long-range crystallinity. Among them, alloys of group IV semiconductors, specifically SiGe alloys, have significant technological value. Using nanomembrane strain engineering methods, we demonstrate the fabrication of fully elastically relaxed Si(1-x)Ge(x) nanomembranes (NMs) for use as growth substrates for new materials. To do so, we grow defect-free, uniformly and elastically strained SiGe layers on Si substrates and release the SiGe layers to allow them to relax this strain completely as free-standing NMs. These SiGe NMs are transferred to new hosts and bonded there. We confirm the high structural quality of these new materials and demonstrate their use as substrates for technologically relevant epitaxial films by growing strained-Si layers and thick, lattice-matched SiGe alloy layers on them.

Symmetry in Strain Engineering of Nanomembranes: Making New Strained Materials

Strain in a material changes the lattice constant and thereby creates a material with new properties relative to the unstrained, but chemically identical, material. The ability to alter the strain (its magnitude, direction, extent, periodicity, symmetry, and nature) allows tunability of these new properties. A recent development, crystalline nanomembranes, offers a powerful platform for using and tuning strain to create materials that have unique properties, not achievable in bulk materials or with conventional processes. Nanomembranes, because of their thinness, enable elastic strain sharing, a process that introduces large amounts of strain and unique strain distributions in single-crystal materials, without exposing the material to the formation of extended defects. We provide here prescriptions for making new strained materials using crystal symmetry as the driver: we calculate the strain distributions in flat nanomembranes for two-fold and four-fold elastically symmetric materials. We show that we can controllably tune the amount of strain and the asymmetry of the strain distribution in elastically isotropic and anisotropic materials uniformly over large areas. We perform the experimental demonstration with a trilayer Si(110)/Si((1-x))Ge(x)(110)/Si(110) nanomembrane: an elastically two-fold symmetric system in which we can transfer strain that is biaxially isotropic. We are thus able to make uniformly strained materials that cannot be made any other way.

Nanomembrane-based materials for Group IV semiconductor quantum electronics

Strained-silicon/relaxed-silicon-germanium alloy (strained-Si/SiGe) heterostructures are the foundation of Group IV-element quantum electronics and quantum computation, but current materials quality limits the reliability and thus the achievable performance of devices. In comparison to conventional approaches, single-crystal SiGe nanomembranes are a promising alternative as substrates for the epitaxial growth of these heterostructures. Because the nanomembrane is truly a single crystal, in contrast to the conventional SiGe substrate made by compositionally grading SiGe grown on bulk Si, significant improvements in quantum electronic-device reliability may be expected with nanomembrane substrates. We compare lateral strain inhomogeneities and the local mosaic structure (crystalline tilt) in strained-Si/SiGe heterostructures that we grow on SiGe nanomembranes and on compositionally graded SiGe substrates, with micro-Raman mapping and nanodiffraction, respectively. Significant structural improvements are found using SiGe nanomembranes.

Silicon Nanomembranes Incorporating Mixed Crystal Orientations

The desire for increased processor speed leads to a demand for high-carrier-mobility CMOS devices. The complementary nature of CMOS, with both n-type and p-type channels, means that the lowest-mobility channel will limit the device speed. In the conventional (001) orientation of Si, the hole mobility is dramatically less than the electron mobility (1), (2), and hence serves as a bottleneck in CMOS performance. To compensate for the lower hole mobility, it is customary to fabricate the p-type device regions 3-10x larger than the n-type regions, consuming an undesirably large quantity of device real estate. The current drive imbalance between n-type and p-type channels can be minimized, thus negating the need for disproportionately large p-type regions, by fabricating mixed regions of Si(110) (high hole mobility) and Si(001) (high electron mobility) on a single substrate; so-called hybrid-orientation technology (HOT) (1). We fabricate a mixed-crystal-orientation material in flexible membrane form, using Si nanomembrane (SiNM) transfer and overgrowth, to produce a “quilt” of Si(001) and Si(110).

Electronic Transport Properties of Epitaxial Si/SiGe Heterostructures Grown on Single-Crystal SiGe Nanomembranes.

To assess possible improvements in the electronic performance of two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) in silicon, SiGe/Si/SiGe heterostructures are grown on fully elastically relaxed single-crystal SiGe nanomembranes produced through a strain engineering approach. This procedure eliminates the formation of dislocations in the heterostructure. Top-gated Hall bar devices are fabricated to enable magnetoresistivity and Hall effect measurements. Both Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations and the quantum Hall effect are observed at low temperatures, demonstrating the formation of high-quality 2DEGs. Values of charge carrier mobility as a function of carrier density extracted from these measurements are at least as high or higher than those obtained from companion measurements made on heterostructures grown on conventional strain graded substrates. In all samples, impurity scattering appears to limit the mobility.

Semiconductor nanomembranes: a platform for new science and technology

Semiconductor nanomembranes, extremely thin (<10 to ~1000 nm) single-crystal sheets, promise considerable new science and technology. They are flexible, they are readily transferable to other hosts and conform and bond easily, and they can take on a large range of shapes (tubes, spirals, ribbons, wires) via appropriate strain engineering and patterning. The ready ability to stack membranes allows the integration of the properties of different materials and/or orientations. A brief review of nanomembrane fabrication and manipulation with a view toward different types of applications is provided.