Germanium PIN on Silicon

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2010-01-01

Department

Physics

Program

Physics, Applied

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

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Abstract

In this thesis I examined the effectiveness of surfactant mediated Epitaxy in reducing the dislocation density when growing germanium on silicon for photodiode application and then compared to homoepitaxy of germanium on germanium. The goal is to determine a method to integrate germanium photodiodes on employed silicon devices Analysis of the carrier concentration measurements show that the devices have the desired PIN structure with high levels of doping in both contact layers. The current vs voltage measurements show the devices on both substrates have high defect densities. This result suggests that the surfactant method does not achieve relaxation under the flux used and that the homoepitaxy was grown on an unclean surface or other non-ideal growth situations requiring further research. Current vs. voltage under illumination shows that the devices responded to 1.55 micron light and have a theoretical responsivity of 91 mA/W.