High-quality III-V semiconductor MBE growth on Ge/Si virtual substrates for metal-oxide-semiconductor device fabrication

We describe the molecular-beam epitaxial (MBE) growth and fabrication of III-V metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices on Ge/Si virtual substrates. We show that high-temperature in-situ H-2 annealing in the chemical-vapor deposition system changes the Ge surface configuration and produces a surface with predominantly double-step-layer conditions, which is crucial for the growth of single-domain GaAs. In addition, the surface morphology of III-V on Ge/Si improved significantly with an annealing treatment of the Ge surface carried out under high arsenic background pressure in the MBE chamber. This facilitates uniform As-monolayer formation on the entire Ge surface. Low-temperature migration-enhanced epitaxy (MBE) and low-temperature conventional GaAs growth not only enhance the growth of single-domain GaAs without Ge outdiffusion but also produce a sufficiently smooth surface for high-k dielectric deposition, achieving low leakage current. A 300-nm-thick GaAs buffer layer was grown, followed by a 10 nm growth of In0.2Ga0.8As high-mobility channel layer. A 7-8-nm-thick Al2O3 layer was deposited ex-situ by atomic-layer deposition (ALD). We verify the quality of III-V growth using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and photoluminescence (PL) measurement. The C-V characteristics show unpinning of the Fermi level, which is a necessary condition for gate voltage control of the drain current. This work suggests this materials combination is a promising candidate for the realization of advanced, nonclassical complementary-MOS and optoelectronic devices on Si substrates. (C), 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.