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Back Cover: Thermal recrystallization of physical vapor deposition based germanium thin films on bulk silicon (100) (Phys. Status Solidi RRL 11/2013)
Author(s) -
Hussain Aftab M.,
Fahad Hossain M.,
Sevilla Galo A. Torres,
Hussain Muhammad M.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
physica status solidi (rrl) – rapid research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.786
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1862-6270
pISSN - 1862-6254
DOI - 10.1002/pssr.201370465
Subject(s) - germanium , materials science , annealing (glass) , optoelectronics , silicon , chemical vapor deposition , semiconductor , thin film , substrate (aquarium) , nanotechnology , metallurgy , oceanography , geology
Germanium is a historical semiconductor material whose hole mobility is much higher than that in silicon. Its near‐term application areas include, but are not limited to, p‐type metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (p‐MOSFETs) in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, high speed devices for communications and optoelectronics. One major challenge with its mass‐scale production is the expensive nature of the growth process of single‐crystalline germanium. Therefore, Hussain et al. ( pp. 966–970 ) show a simple, low‐cost, and scalable process for obtaining uniform, smooth surfaced, high quality mono‐crystalline germanium (100) thin films on silicon (100). The germanium thin films were deposited on a silicon substrate using plasma‐assisted sputtering based physical vapor deposition (PVD). They were crystallized by annealing at various temperatures ranging from 700 °C to 1100 °C. Hussain et al. report that the best quality germanium thin films are obtained above the melting point of germanium (937 °C), thus offering a method for in‐situ Czochralski process. The authors also show well behaved high‐ κ /metal gate Metal–Oxide–Semi‐conductor Capacitors (MOSCAPs) using this film.