Solid-phase epitaxial crystallisation of Ge_xSi_1-x alloy layers

Thermally-induced solid-phase epitaxial crystallisation (SPEC) and ion-beam-induced epitaxial crystallisation (IBIEC) of amorphous Ge_xSi_1-x alloy layers is examined for three different starting structures: a) strain-relaxed alloy layers of uniform composition, b) strained alloy layers of uniform composition, and c) Ge implanted Si layers. Thermal annealing experiments show that the activation energy for strain-relaxed alloys is higher than that expected from a simple extrapolation between the activation energies of Si and Ge, and exceeds that of Si for x ≤ 0.3. Experiments on thin strained layers show that MBE grown strained layers which are stable during annealing at 1100°C for 60 s are also fully strained after SPEC, whereas layers which relax during annealing at 1100°C also relax during SPEC. Experiments on ion-implanted Ge_xSi_1-x structures show that fully strained Si/Ge_xSi_1-x/Si heterostructures can be fabricated for ion fluences below a critical fluence, and as for uniform alloy layers that this critical fluence is accurately predicted by equilibrium theory. Strain relaxation during SPEC of uniform alloys and implanted structures is shown to be correlated with a sudden reduction in crystallisation velocity which is believed to be caused by stress-induced roughening or faceting of the crystalline/amorphous interface. IBIEC of thick (800 nm) implanted layers is shown to be limited by competition from ion-beam induced random crystallisation, while thin (120 nm) uniform alloys and implanted structures are shown to crystallise epitaxially and to exhibit similar behaviour to thermally annealed samples under certain conditions.