Thermal hole emission from Si/Si1−xGex/Si quantum wells by deep level transient spectroscopy

Abstract

We report on the determination of the valence band offset between strained Si1−xGex and unstrained Si layers by deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) on Si/Si1−xGex/Si quantum well (QW) structures. A problem of this technique is to store the holes long enough (≥1 ms) in the QW so that the thermal emission of holes is the dominating process. We achieved sufficiently long hole storage times by using two different structures. In the first ones, this is obtained by selective growth which leads to a lateral limitation of the smooth QW layer, and with good Schottky contacts. For the second ones, the localization of holes is due to the presence of Si1−xGex islands. For a sample containing a smooth QW with XGe=0.17 a valence band offset of 140±20 meV was obtained and for the island layer with XGe=0.3 a value of 258±20 meV was found. These results are in good agreement with theory. The DLTS measurements are compared to admittance spectroscopy results and photoluminescence measurements.