Design rules to control the tensile strain in Ge μ-membranes fabricated from GeOI substrates for photonics applications

G. Dias (1) , D. Rouchon (1) , J. Widiez (1) , J. Hartmann (1) , D. Fowler (1) , A. Chelnokov (1) , V. Reboud (1) , A. Gassenq (2) , S. Tardif (3) , K. Guiloy (2) , N. Pauc (2) , J. Escalante (4) , I. Duchemin (4) , Y-M. Niquet (4) , F. Rieutord (3) , V. Calvo (2) , J. Faist (5) , R. Geiger (6) , T. Zabel (6) , H. Sigg (6)

1 CEA-LETI - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Information
2 SiNaps - Silicon Nanoelectronics Photonics and Structures
3 NRS - Nanostructures et Rayonnement Synchrotron
4 LSIM - Laboratory of Atomistic Simulation
5 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]
6 PSI - Paul Scherrer Institute

Applying the right tensile strain to suspended membranes [1] can make Germanium a direct band-gap semiconductor, which is most promising way to low-threshold lasing [2]. The current key to reach the targeted high tensile strain is the quality of the Germanium. Epitaxied Germanium (Ge) on Silicon (Si) suffers from dislocations at its interface due to the lattice mismatch between Si and Ge (Figure 1 a). Higher crystalline quality can be obtained by fabricating Germanium on Insulator (GeOI) substrates by Smart Cut™ technology [3]. However, the processing has to be adapted to obtain specific “optical” GeOI substrates [4], much thicker than standard microelectronics GeOI.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Optique / photonique; Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

G. Dias, D. Rouchon, J. Widiez, J. Hartmann, D. Fowler, et al.. Design rules to control the tensile strain in Ge μ-membranes fabricated from GeOI substrates for photonics applications. 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Group IV Photonics (GFP), Aug 2015, Vancouver, Canada. pp.133-134, ⟨10.1109/Group4.2015.7305988⟩. ⟨hal-02016616⟩