A Method for Heteroepitaxial Growth of Germanium on Silicon

Stanford researchers have patented a growth and anneal process for growing heteroepitaxial-germanium directly onto silicon. Low surface roughness and defects are confined near the Si/Ge interface, thus not threading to the surface as expected in this lattice mismatched system. This process creates defect-free, fully-relaxed, smooth, single crystal germanium layers on silicon without a graded buffer layer or any chemical-mechanical planarization. This technology simplifies heterogeneous integration of germanium CMOS and optoelectronic devices on silicon.