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We demonstrate a very-low temperature cleaning technique based on atomic hydrogen irradiation for highly (1 %) tensile strained Ge epilayers grown on metastable, partially strain relaxed GeSn buffer layers. Atomic hydrogen is obtained by catalytic cracking of hydrogen gas on a hot tungsten filament in an ultra-high vacuum chamber. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy, reflection high energy electron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, and micro-Raman showed that an O- and C-free Ge surface was achieved, while maintaining the same roughness and strain condition of the as-deposited sample and without any Sn segregation, at a process temperature in the 100-300 °C range.

n-type Ge/SiGe asymmetric coupled quantum wells represent the building block of a variety of nanoscale quantum devices, including recently proposed designs for a silicon-based THz quantum cascade laser. In this paper, we combine structural and spectroscopic experiments on 20-module superstructures, each featuring two Ge wells coupled through a Ge-rich SiGe tunnel barrier, as a function of the geometry parameters of the design and the P dopant concentration. Through a comparison of THz spectroscopic data with numerical calculations of intersubband optical absorption resonances, we demonstrated that it is possible to tune, by design, the energy and the spatial overlap of quantum confined subbands in the conduction band of the heterostructures. The high structural/interface quality of the samples and the control achieved on subband hybridization are promising starting points towards a working electrically pumped light-emitting device.

Exploiting intersubband transitions in Ge/SiGe quantum cascade devices provides a way to integrate terahertz light emitters into silicon-based technology. With the view to realizing a Ge/SiGe Quantum Cascade Laser, we present the optical and structural properties of n-type strain-symmetrized Ge/SiGe asymmetric coupled quantum wells grown on Si(001) substrates by means of ultrahigh vacuum chemical vapor deposition. We demonstrate high material quality of strain-symmetrized structures and heterointerfaces as well as control over inter-well coupling and electron tunneling. Motivated by the promising results obtained on ACQWs, which are the basic building block of a cascade structure, we investigate, both experimentally and theoretically, a Ge/SiGe THz QCL design, optimized through a non-equilibrium Green’s function formalism

n-type Ge/SiGe terahertz quantum cascade laser are investigated using non-equilibrium Green's functions calculations. We compare the temperature dependence of the terahertz gain properties with an equivalent GaAs/AlGaAs QCL design. In the Ge/SiGe case, the gain is found to be much more robust to temperature increase, enabling operation up to room temperature. The better temperature robustness with respect to III-V is attributed to the much weaker interaction with optical phonons. The effect of lower interface quality is investigated and can be partly overcome by engineering smoother quantum confinement via multiple barrier heights., 5 pages, 5 figures

Display Omitted Focused ion beam and oxygen plasma etching are used for controlled disruption of ferritin.The detection gain of iron by EDX upon focused ion beam treatment increased by 300%.XPS detection of Fe in ferritin after oxygen plasma etching was enhanced by ~15. Ferritin is the main protein devoted to iron storage in living systems. Several evidences show that ferritin can bind in vivo metals other than iron, such as aluminium. Moreover, recent studies demonstrated that ferritin iron core composition differs between physiological and pathological brain ferritins. The precise evaluation of chemical species present within the ferritin mineral core and their chemical coordination is therefore of paramount importance. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy are powerful tools to perform this chemical analysis: however the protein shell surrounding the mineral core reduces significantly the amount of electrons/photons detected, thus reducing the potentiality of these techniques.In this framework we investigated the use of physical treatments, namely focused ion beam milling and oxygen plasma etching, in order to overcome the limitations imposed by the presence of the protein shell. We demonstrated that the combined use of focused ion beam milling and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy provides an enhancement of iron detection by a factor of about two. As for the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy technique, it has an intrinsic low capability of probing the core metal in ferritin due to the electron escape depth value that is of the order of the protein shell thickness. Using a pre-treatment in oxygen plasma the detection of iron was enhanced by a factor of more than 15. Therefore, the disruption of the protein shell by plasma etching or ion milling emerges as a fundamental prerequisite to perform an accurate chemical characterization of the ferritin core.

Asymmetric coupled quantum wells in the conduction band of germanium grown on silicon wafers have been investigated by THz pump-THz broadband probe picosecond spectroscopy. The optically-pumped laser gain coefficient is estimated.

Germanium is emerging as the substrate of choice for the growth of graphene in CMOS-compatible processes. For future application in next generation devices the accurate control over the properties of high-quality graphene synthesized on Ge surfaces, such as number of layers and domain size, is of paramount importance. Here we investigate the role of the process gas flows on the CVD growth of graphene on Ge(100). The quality and morphology of the deposited material is assessed by using mu-Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photo emission spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. We find that by simply varying the carbon precursor flow different growth regimes yielding to graphene nanoribbons, graphene monolayer, and graphene multilayer are established. We identify the growth conditions yielding to a layer-by-layer growth regime and report on the achievement of homogeneous monolayer graphene with an average intensity ratio of 2D and G bands in the Raman map larger than 3.

Asymmetric quantum well systems are excellent candidates to realize semiconductor light emitters at far-infrared wavelengths not covered by other gain media. Group-IV semiconductor heterostructures can be grown on silicon substrates, and their dipole-active intersubband transitions could be used to generate light from devices integrated with silicon electronic circuits. Here, we have realized an optically pumped emitter structure based on a three-level Ge/Si0.18Ge0.82 asymmetric coupled quantum well design. Optical pumping was performed with a tunable free-electron laser emitting at photon energies of 25 and 41 meV, corresponding to the energies of the first two intersubband transitions 0 → 1 and 0 → 2 as measured by Fourier-transform spectroscopy. We have studied with a synchronized terahertz timedomain spectroscopy probe the relaxation dynamics after pumping, and we have interpreted the resulting relaxation times (in the range 60 to 110 ps) in the framework of an out-of-equilibrium model of the intersubband electron−phonon dynamics. The spectral changes in the probe pulse transmitted at pump−probe coincidence were monitored in the range 0.7−2.9 THz for different samples and pump intensity and showed indication of both free carrier absorption increase and bleaching of the 1 → 2 transition. The quantification from data and models of the free carrier losses and of the bleaching efficiency allowed us to predict the conditions for population inversion and to determine a threshold pump power density for lasing around 500 kW/cm2 in our device. The ensemble of our results shows that optical pumping of germanium quantum wells is a promising route toward siliconintegrated far-infrared emitters.

The early stage of the growth of Ge planar films on a Si(001) surface is investigated in real-time by using the spectroscopic ellipsometric technique. We demonstrate the possibility to measure the deposition rate and follow its evolution during the growth. The use of spectroscopic ellipsometry in combination with atomic force microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrates that the deposition rate evolution is related to the stress status of the growing film through the variation of its complex dielectric constant.

Display Omitted Argon and oxygen plasma processes are used for controlled disruption of ferritin.XPS detection of Fe in ferritin film after plasma process was enhanced by ~10.XPS reveals the oxidation state of Fe in the ferritin core after the plasma etching. Ferritin is the main iron storage protein in living systems. Recent studies demonstrated that the chemical species present in the ferritin core and their chemical coordination can be different between physiological and pathological ferritin proteins. Therefore it is of paramount importance revealing the presence of metals other than iron and their oxidation state in the protein core.In this work we investigated and compared the use of argon and oxygen plasma processes for the erosion of the protein shell surrounding the mineral core, which is necessary for the chemical analysis of the ferritin core by surface sensitive technique such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We find that both the proposed etching processes are effective in the disruption of the protein shell and in the exposure of the Fe inside the core of the molecules. Neither oxygen nor argon plasma induced significant artifacts in the samples nor produce dramatic roughening in the surface allowing for a controlled thinning of the ferritin film. In the plasma treated samples X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy detected the Fe(III) oxidation state of metal present inside the ferritin cavity.

We report on the realization of high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas based on modulation-doped Si/SiGe heterostructure grown directly on thin SiGe-On-Insulator (SGOI) substrate. The samples were grown by using low-pressure chemical vapor deposition. A pregrowth procedure for the cleaning of the SGOI surface that preserves the integrity and the composition of the substrate was developed. An electron mobility as high as 10(5)cm(2)V(-1) s(-1) at T = 0.4 K and 2000 cm(2)V(-1) s(-1) at T = 300 K was obtained. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Highly efficient and transparent multicomponent catalysts for Dye Solar Cells (DSCs) were obtained by simultaneous electrodeposition of platinum and cobalt-sulfide (Pt:CoS) on conducting glass substrates from a mixture solution of both precursors. At equal charge transfer resistances (RCT), the superior transparency of electrodeposited (ED) Pt:CoS compared to ED Pt-only and ED CoS-only was attributed to the synergic combination of a very thin CoS layer and a fine dispersion of Pt nanoparticles. The highly catalytic properties of Pt:CoS with less electrodeposited material consumption, carried out at room temperature, can represent a fast and energy saving fabrication process, also compatible with flexible plastic substrates. In fact, DSCs with the ED Pt:CoS counterelectrodes showed the highest power conversion efficiency in back illumination, which is the configuration used for flexible metallic and bifacial DSCs during operation, gaining on average almost 14% and 7% in device efficiency with respect to ED CoS-only and ED Pt-only based cells. These results are important for all applications where transparency represents a key factor (e.g. BIPV, metal based devices) and may also point at blending different precursor solutions as a more general route for electrodeposition of layers with added functionality.

We report on the use of a carbon-rich Pt-based material, obtained by electron and ion beam assisted deposition from metal-organic precursor, as a mask for pattern transfer processes. Thin and narrow mask patterns subjected to oxygen plasma and reactive ion etching (RIE) of silicon in SF(6) were investigated by atomic force microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray analysis. As for the masks obtained by electron beam assisted deposition, both the pattern and the surrounding halo were found to be etched in oxygen plasma. In contrast, the pattern deposited by assist of ion beam was basically unaffected, likely due to implanted Ga(+) ions during deposition, while the surrounding halo was found to be appreciably thinned. Masks having thickness as low as few nanometers sustained successfully a 200 nm RIE step, producing structures with sub-100 nm size. Mask stripping was achieved in Piranha bath. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

""We report on the fabrication process of suspended anodes implemented in Schottky-diode devices on epitaxial Ge. An air-bridge technique based on reactive ion etching in SF(6) was developed in order to release the Schottky contact bridge, ensuring higher control respect to wet etching. Metal-semiconductor junctions in the sub-micron range with rectifying behaviour have been obtained. The present fabrication process can be extended as is to the use of silicon on insulator substrates. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.""

The beam of planar THz Schottky detectors is strongly concentrated in the dielectric half-space. With the goal of illuminating arrays from the free-space side, we started to investigate substrate removal from both GaAs and Ge-on-Si diode wafers. © 2011 IEEE.

We discuss the effect of the deposition of a Si cap layer on the composition and morphological properties of Ge(Si)/Si(001) self-assembled islands deposited by chemical vapor deposition at 750 degrees C. The morphological evolution of the island shape was investigated by means of atomic force microscopy and the actual island composition has been measured by means of x-ray photoemission spectroscopy and x-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques. At an early stage of Si capping, Si atoms are incorporated in the island layer. As a consequence, we observe a reverse Stranski-Krastanov growth dynamics in agreement with the volume-composition stability diagram proposed for domes, pyramids, and prepyramids in the GexSi1-x/Si(100) system. We find that the island burying begins when the Ge average composition reaches the value x=0.28. Once the islands are buried under a thin silicon layer their composition is unaffected by subsequent silicon deposition. We conclude that strain relief, rather than thermal diffusion, is the main driving force for the observed Ge-Si alloying. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.

We report on the growth and characterization of high‐mobility 2DEGs on tensile strained Si grown on cubic SiGe alloy on SOI substrates. The electrical properties were investigated in the 4.2–300 K temperature range as a function of growth conditions and sample structure. Hall mobilities as high as 82000 cm2/V.s at T=4.2 K were obtained in the best 2DEGs on SOI. We found that the main mechanism limiting the mobility at low temperature is the ionized impurity scattering.

The growth of high-mobility modulation-doped Si/SiGe heterostructures on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates is demonstrated. The structural and electrical properties of the samples are comparable with those of similar samples grown on standard Si substrates. Electron mobilities as high as 2800 cm 2 V −1 s −1 at room temperature and 8.2×10 4 cm 2 V −1 s −1 at 4 K are obtained.

Novel silicon photonics applications requiring heavy n-type doping have recently driven a great deal of interest towards the phosphorous doping of germanium. In this work we report on infrared reflectance spectroscopy measurements of the electron density in heavily n-type doped germanium layers obtained by stacking multiple phosphorous δ-layers. Here, we demonstrate that the conventional Drude model of the electrodynamic response of free carriers in metals can be adapted to describe heavily doped semiconductor thin films. Consequently, the effect of the electron density on the plasma frequency, scattering rate and complex permittivity can be investigated.

We have provided direct evidence for the presence of considerable Si-Ge intermixing in strained and unstrained Ge quantum dots deposited on Si(001) and Si(111). The local structure around Ce was probed by using Ge K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy; complementary evidence for intermixing was provided by AFM and STM studies. These results implied that the strain energy in the dots was reduced by Si atoms diffusing into the dots, resulting in a modified form of Stranski-Krastanov growth. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The presence of misfit and threading dislocations formed by strain relaxation in multilayers of Ge islands grown on Si(100) is investigated by transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. We find that the dislocations are generated inside the islands and propagate into the silicon spacers remaining confined within the columnar regions above the islands themselves. Thus the dislocations drive the vertical ordering of the stacked relaxed islands in a way similar to the strain induced self-ordering mechanism in the strained islands.

Due to the evergrowing use of optical fibers in communications, for both long distances and local area networks, there is an increasing effort toward the realization of high speed and high efficiency optical detectors, operating in the low-absorption regions ~1.3‐1.55 mm! of silica fibers. Although III‐V semiconductors provide high detection efficiency in the range of interest, incorporating them in the well-established Si technology is difficult and expensive. 1 SiGe structures on silicon represent an alternative solution for near-infrared photodetection, owing to their narrow band gap and full compatibility with silicon technologies. SiGe alloy heterostructures, multiquantum wells, and superlattices have been used as active layers in p-i-n photodetectors and their operation at 1.3 mm has been successfully demonstrated for both normal incidence 2 and waveguide configurations. 3 The fundamental limitation of SiGe-based heterostructures is the vanishing response at 1.55 mm. Pure germanium, indeed, represents the best candidate for 1.3‐1.55 mm photodetectors, due to its direct band gap of 0.8 eV. However, owing to the high lattice mismatch with Si, it is not easy to obtain Ge films with suitable characteristics: thickness appropriate for maximum efficiency, flatness compatible with submicron lithography, minimum defect content for high speed. Thick graded buffers can be used to partially relax the strain due to the lattice mismatch, 4 but the molecular beam epitaxy ~MBE! growth of such a layer is cumbersome and expensive. In the present work we investigate the feasibility of the simplest fabrication approach, i.e., the epitaxial growth of thick layers ~well over the critical thickness! of pure germanium on silicon by chemical vapor deposition ~CVD!. The use of pure Ge on Si for efficient photon detection in the range 1.3‐1.5 mm, first attempted by Luryi et al., 5 requires

We report on Ge Schottky diodes epitaxially grown on Si(001) exhibiting a good responsivity in the near-infrared up to 1.55 mu m. The Ge layers were grown by UHV chemical vapor deposition. It was found that the photocurrent increases upon increasing the reverse bias, reaching a maximum responsivity of 0.12 A/W at 1.3 mu m for 4 V bias. The leakage current density at the saturation voltage is 1 nA/mu m(2).

Heterostructures formed by epitaxial Ge grown in situ on Si(100) substrates were characterized by photoelectric yield spectroscopy, UPS and XPS. It is shown that both substrate and overlayer valence-band tops can be identified in the photoelectric-yield spectrum, thus allowing a direct and precise determination of the band lineup. We find a valence band discontinuity of 0.36 +/- 0.02 eV for heterojunctions whose overlayers were grown according to the Stranski-Krastanov mechanism, A considerably larger offset is obtained from the analysis of the XPS data.

In this letter we present an atomic force microscopy and photoluminescence investigation of two‐ and three‐dimensional Ge structures deposited on Si(100) substrates. The photoluminescence spectra demonstrated the presence of quantum confinement effects in flat and uncapped Ge layers and in Ge islands even for the relatively large size of the structures. Moreover, a correlation between the sample morphology and the features of the photoluminescence is demonstrated.

We use atomic force microscopy, x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and x-ray absorption spectroscopy to study the effect of the deposition of a Si cap layer by chemical vapor deposition on the morphology and composition of a Ge island layer grown at 600 degrees C. We found that the capping of self-assembled Ge islands under a silicon layer results in high-quality, atomically flat layer only at deposition temperature above 700 degrees C. On the other hand at this temperature Ge-Si intermixing and island coarsening are greatly enhanced, resulting in an increased average island volume. Here we show that the predeposition at low temperature of a thin cap layer preserves island shape, size, and composition when the capped islands undergo a subsequent process at higher temperature up to 750 degrees C. It is shown, therefore, that with a two-step capping process it is possible to combine the benefit of a low temperature capping, which reduces island alloying and coarsening, with that of a high temperature capping which is needed to recover a flat surface. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.

We have fabricated and characterized at low temperature, down to 0.32 K, tunnel junctions made by a thin film of heavily doped silicon in contact with superconducting electrodes through Schottky barriers. Doped silicon films were chemical vapor deposited on silicon-on-insulator substrates and laterally dry etched in mesas. Aluminum or, alternatively, niobium contacts were deposited on the mesas. Below the superconducting critical temperature Tc, an energy gap opens in the superconductor and the current–voltage characteristics become nonlinear and strongly sensitive to temperature changes. We have also characterized the heavily doped silicon in terms of the electron–phonon thermal decoupling by cooling the electron gas by means of aluminum–silicon–aluminum structures. With Nb electrodes, we have observed an anomaly of the electrical differential conductance at zero voltage and a larger electron dissipation, as a result of a less opaque barrier.

In this paper we present the observation of ballistic transport in strained silicon cavities defined by etching on a silicon germanium heterostructure, demonstrated by magnetic focusing of conductance of the cavity at T = 50 mK. Numerical simulations, based on a novel approach which allows to include an arbitrary degree of decoherence in mesoscopic transport, show that magnetoconductance features can be related to the semiclassical orbits by means of the local density of states in the cavity. ©2004 IEEE.

In the present work we report on the evolution of the electronic states as a function of Ge overlayer thickness ranging from a fraction of a monolayer to few tens of monolayers. The Ge states above the Si valence band top could be clearly detected at every overlayer thickness d. For d < similar to 6 Angstrom, the Ge state density exhibits a double linear edge. Upon increasing the overlayer thickness the split between the two edges decreases and the double edge structure disappears for d > similar to 6 Angstrom, i.e., at the critical thickness for the transition from strained to unstrained overlayers. For these larger thicknesses, the Ge edge becomes broad and featureless. The energy separation between the Ge onset and the Si valence top increases up to 0.70 eV at larger overlayer thicknesses.

The valence density of states of Ge grown epitaxially on Si(100) is investigated as a function of thickness by yield spectroscopy and photoemission techniques. A double edge is present in the yield data for thicknesses smaller than the lattice relaxation critical thickness. Furthermore, the line-up of the Ge states to the Si valence band varies with overlayer thickness. Photoemission techniques fail to detect this behavior. The causes for the discrepancy are analyzed.

In this article we discuss the use of spectroscopic ellipsometry for an in situ and real time probe of three-dimensional self-organized Ge island growth on Si (100) surfaces. We will show that atomic force microscopy and x-ray photoemission spectroscopy can be combined with spectroscopic ellipsometry to give information on the size and shape evolution of the Ge islands as well as on the amount of Ge deposited on the Si surface.