抄録
Understanding essential mechanisms of Ge growth on Si is crucial for fabricating high-quality Ge/Si and SiGe/ Si heterostructures applied to the electronic and optoelectronic devices, such as field-effect transistors with high electron mobilities, photodetectors in Si-based integrated circuits, and devices consisted of self-organized quantum dot structures with novel optical and electronic transport properties. In this paper, I report on recent progress in studies of Ge growth on Si (001) substrates based on our experimental results. Three topics are presented: Ge island formation in Stranski-Krastanov mode, surfactant epitaxy with atomic hydrogen, and a novel technique for growing fully strain-relaxed Ge thin films with flat surfaces. Here we discuss the issues of surface morphological evolution during the growth, defect generation, and strain relaxation in the film, all of which are closely related each other.
