Epitaxial growth of SiGe films by annealing Al-Ge alloyed pastes on Si substrate

A simple, low-cost, and non-vacuum epitaxial growth method to realize large-area semiconductors on crystalline silicon will become the game-changer for various applications. For example, we can expect the disruptive effect on the cost of large-scale III-V multi-junction solar cells if we could replace the high-cost germanium substrate with silicon-germanium (SiGe) on Si. For SiGe epitaxial growth, we attempted to develop a process using original Al-Ge pastes for screen printing and subsequent annealing. We compare two pastes including Al-Ge alloyed pastes with compositional uniformity in each particle and Al-Ge mixed pastes. We revealed that Al-Ge alloyed paste could form flatter SiGe film with much less residual pastes, supported by in-situ observations. The uniform and sufficient dissolution of the alloyed paste is responsible for these and led to higher average Ge-composition by annealing at 500 degrees C. The composition in SiGe was vertically graded up to similar to 90% at the topmost surface. These results show that printing and firing of Al-Ge alloyed paste on Si is the desirable, simple, and high-speed process for epitaxial growth of SiGe, which could be potentially used as the lattice-matched virtual substrate with III-V semiconductors.

Automated summary

A simple and low-cost method for large-area semiconductor growth on crystalline silicon is proposed. The use of alloyed paste for screen printing and annealing can lead to flat SiGe films with higher Ge composition.