From Thin Relaxed SiGe Buffer Layers to Strained Silicon Directly on Oxide

Abstract

Thin relaxed SiGe buffer layers with Ge contents of 23at% and 26at% and thicknesses between 150 to 180 nm on Si(100) terminated with 6 nm Si were made by He ion implantation and annealing. Subsequent overgrowth of the thin buffers with thin strained Si cap layers with SiGe and strained Si reduced the threading dislocation and pile-up densities significantly. Best results were achieved for high temperature SiGe overgrowth with a thickness of 200nm and Ge contents lower than the effective Ge content of the buffer. Threading dislocation densities as low as 1x105 cm-2 and dislocation pile-up densities of 10 cm-1 were determined. Strained silicon on insulator wafers were produced by wafer bonding. Wafer splitting was done by H ion implantation and annealing. The strain of the layers was measured by Raman spectroscopy revealing a strain of 0.66% in the tensile strained Si on the partially relaxed Si0.77Ge0.23 buffers.