Photovoltaic Ge/SiGe quantum dot mid-infrared photodetector enhanced by surface plasmons.

We report the fabrication and characterization of a multilayer Ge quantum dot detector grown on Si1-xGex virtual substrate (x = 0.18) for photovoltaic mid-wave infrared photodetection. Detector displays an over 100% photovoltaic response enhancement as compared to a conventional Ge/Si device due to smaller hole effective mass in the SiGe barriers. A further enhancement in sensitivity is achieved by excitation of surface plasmon polariton waves in a Ge/SiGe photodetector coupled with a two-dimensional plasmonic structure. The plasmonic resonance induced photocurrent enhancement is found to be larger when the incident infrared light illuminates the detector from its substrate side. At zero bias and 90 K, the responsivity of 40 mA/W and peak detectivity of 1.4 × 1011 cm·Hz1/2/W are determined at a wavelength of 4 µm.

Molecular ground hole state of vertically coupled GeSi/Si self-assembled quantum dots.

We study the ground state of a hole confined in two vertically coupled GeSi/Si quantum dots as a function of the interdot distance and dot composition within the sp(3) tight-binding approach. Both quantum-mechanical tunneling and inhomogeneous strain distribution are included. For pure Ge dots, the strain is found to have two effects on the hole binding energy: (i) reduction of the binding energy below the value of the single dot with increasing dot separation and (ii) molecular bond breaking for intermediate interdot distances and posterior bond restoration at larger distance. Both effects are smeared upon Ge-Si intermixing.

Effect of the growth rate on the morphology and structural properties of hut-shaped Ge islands in Si(001).

The effect of Ge deposition rate on the morphology and structural properties of self-assembled Ge/Si(001) islands was studied. Ge/Si(001) layers were grown by solid-source molecular-beam epitaxy at 500 °C. We adjusted the Ge coverage, 6 monolayers (ML), and varied the Ge growth rate by a factor of 100, R = 0.02-2 ML s(-1), to produce films consisting of hut-shaped Ge islands. The samples were characterized by scanning tunnelling microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and Rutherford backscattering measurements. The mean lateral size of Ge nanoclusters decreases from 14.1 nm at R = 0.02 ML s(-1) to 9.8 nm at R = 2 ML s(-1). The normalized width of the size distribution shows non-monotonic behaviour as a function of R and has a minimum value of 19% at R = 2 ML s(-1). Ge nanoclusters fabricated at the highest deposition rate demonstrate the best structural quality and the highest Ge content (∼0.9).