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Germanium and silicon-germanium alloys have found entry into Si technology thanks to their compatibility with Si processing and their ability to tailor electronic properties by strain and band-gap engineering. Germaniums potential to extend Si functionalities, as exemplified by lasing action of strained-Ge on Si substrates, has brought the material back to attention. Yet despite these advances, non-radiative transitions, induced by crystal defects originating from the Ge/Si interface, continue to be a serious bottleneck. Here we demonstrate the drastic emission enhancement achieved via control and mitigation over the parasitic activity of defects in micronscale Ge/Si crystals. We unravel how defects affect interband luminescence and minimize their influence by controlling carrier diffusion with band-gap-engineered reflectors. We finally extended this approach designing efficient quantum well emitters. Our results pave the way for the large-scale implementation of advanced electronic and photonic structures unaffected by the ubiquitous presence of defects developed at epitaxial interfaces.
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Core-shell nanowires made of Si and Ge can be grown experimentally with excellent control for different sizes of both core and shell. We have studied the structural properties of Si/Ge and Ge/Si core-shell nanowires aligned along the $[110]$ direction, with diameters up to 10.2~nm and varying core to shell ratios, using linear scaling Density Functional Theory (DFT). We show that Vegards law, which is often used to predict the axial lattice constant, can lead to an error of up to 1%, underlining the need for a detailed emph{ab initio} atomistic treatment of the nanowire structure. We analyse the character of the intrinsic strain distribution and show that, regardless of the composition or bond direction, the Si core or shell always expands. In contrast, the strain patterns in the Ge shell or core are highly sensitive to the location, composition and bond direction. The highest strains are found at heterojunction interfaces and the surfaces of the nanowires. This detailed understanding of the atomistic structure and strain paves the way for studies of the electronic properties of core-shell nanowires and investigations of doping and structure defects.
Germanium-Tin is emerging as a material exhibiting excellent photonic properties. Here we demonstrate optical initialization and readout of spins in this intriguing group IV semiconductor alloy and report on spin quantum beats between Zeeman-split levels under an external magnetic field. Our optical experiments reveal robust spin orientation in a wide temperature range and a persistent spin lifetime that approaches the ns regime at room temperature. Besides important insights into nonradiative recombination pathways, our findings disclose a rich spin physics in novel epitaxial structures directly grown on a conventional Si substrate. This introduces a viable route towards the synergic enrichment of the group IV semiconductor toolbox with advanced spintronics and photonic capabilities.
The precise knowledge of the atomic order in monocrystalline alloys is fundamental to understand and predict their physical properties. With this perspective, we utilized laser-assisted atom probe tomography to investigate the three-dimensional distribution of atoms in non-equilibrium epitaxial Sn-rich group IV SiGeSn ternary semiconductors. Different atom probe statistical analysis tools including frequency distribution analysis, partial radial distribution functions, and nearest neighbor analysis were employed in order to evaluate and compare the behavior of the three elements to their spatial distributions in an ideal solid solution. This atomistic-level analysis provided clear evidence of an unexpected repulsive interaction between Sn and Si leading to the deviation of Si atoms from the theoretical random distribution. This departure from an ideal solid solution is supported by first principal calculations and attributed to the tendency of the system to reduce its mixing enthalpy throughout the layer-by-layer growth process.
Steering of negatively charged particle beams below 1 GeV has demonstrated to be possible with thin bent silicon and germanium crystals. A newly designed mechanical holder was used for bending crystals, since it allows a remotely-controlled adjustment of crystal bending and compensation of unwanted torsion. Bent crystals were installed and tested at the MAMI Mainz MIcrotron to achieve steering of 0.855-GeV electrons at different bending radii. We report the description and characterization of the innovative bending device developed at INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (LNL).
Compared with direct-gap semiconductors, the valley degeneracy of silicon and germanium opens up new channels for spin relaxation that counteract the spin degeneracy of the inversion-symmetric system. Here the symmetries of the electron-phonon interaction for silicon and germanium are identified and the resulting spin lifetimes are calculated. Room-temperature spin lifetimes of electrons in silicon are found to be comparable to those in gallium arsenide, however, the spin lifetimes in silicon or germanium can be tuned by reducing the valley degeneracy through strain or quantum confinement. The tunable range is limited to slightly over an order of magnitude by intravalley processes.
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