Hole mobility of strained Si/(001)Si1−x Ge x

Abstract

The hole mobility of strained silicon along the 〈110〉 orientation on (001) Si1−xGex is obtained by solving collision term in the Boltzmann transport equation. The analytical model is proposed that considers the effect of strain-induced splitting at valence band valleys in silicon, doping dependence and three scattering mechanisms, i.e., ionized impurity scattering, acoustic phonon scattering and non-polar optical phonon scattering. The hole occupancy at top band indicates a non-monotonic variation under biaxial tensile strain at low temperature (77 K). What’s more, a non-monotonic variation of hole mobility at room temperature (300 K) is presented. Compared with the room temperature hole mobility, the low temperature hole mobility is affected greatly by ionized impurity scattering at lower impurity concentration. At the same time, the room temperature hole mobility is lower than that of electron with the same germanium content and doping concentration. If the parameters are correctly chosen, the model can also be used to calculate the hole mobility of other crystal faces with arbitrary orientation. So, it lays a useful foundation for strained silicon devices and circuits.