Hetero-epitaxy of high quality germanium film on silicon substrate for optoelectronic integrated circuit applications

• Main Authors: Lee, Kwang Hong, Bao, Shuyu, Lin, Yiding, Wang, Yue, Li, Wei, Zhang, Lin, Michel, Jurgen, Fitzgerald, Eugene A., Tan, Chuan Seng, Anantha, P.
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Germanium; Silicon; DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/81289; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/47457
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Integration of photonic devices on silicon (Si) substrates is a key method in enabling large scale manufacturing of Si-based photonic–electronic circuits for next generation systems with high performance, small form factor, low power consumption, and low cost. Germanium (Ge) is a promising material due to its pseudo-direct bandgap and its compatibility with Si-CMOS processing. In this article, we present our recent progress on achieving high quality germanium-on-silicon (Ge/Si) materials. Subsequently, the performance of various functional devices such as photodetectors, lasers, waveguides, and sensors that are fabricated on the Ge/Si platform are discussed. Some possible future works such as the incorporation of tin (Sn) into Ge will be proposed. Finally, some applications based on a fully monolithic integrated photonic–electronic chip on an Si platform will be highlighted at the end of this article.