Abstract
We report an investigation of epitaxial germanium grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on arsenic-terminated (211)Si, which is the preferred substrate in the USA for fabrication of night-vision devices based on mercury cadmium telluride (MCT) grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). The films were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM), and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Arsenic passivation was found to be effective in preventing cross-contamination of unwanted residual species present inside the reactor chamber and also in prolonging the evolution of layer-by-layer growth of Ge for significantly more monolayers than on nonpassivated Si. The two-dimensional (2D) to three-dimensional (3D) transition resulted in Ge islands, the density and morphology of which showed a clear distinction between passivated and nonpassivated (211)Si. Finally, thick Ge layers (∼250 nm) were grown at 525°C and 675°C with and without As passivation, where the layers grown with As passivation resulted in higher crystal quality and smooth surface morphology.
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Shintri, S., Rao, S., Sarney, W. et al. Effect of As Passivation on Vapor-Phase Epitaxial Growth of Ge on (211)Si as a Buffer Layer for CdTe Epitaxy. J. Electron. Mater. 40, 1637–1641 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-011-1627-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-011-1627-8