Carrier scattering induced linewidth broadening in in situ P-doped Ge layers on Si

Highly P doped Ge layers are proposed as a material to realize an on-chip laser for optical interconnect applications. In this work, we demonstrate that these donor impurities have a dramatic impact on the excess carrier lifetime and introduce detrimental many-body effects such as linewidth broadening in the gain medium. Linewidth broadening Gamma(opt)= 10 meV for undoped Ge and Gamma(opt) >= 45 meV for Ge with a doping level up to 5.4 x 10(19) cm(-3) were extracted using photoluminescence spectroscopy and pump-probe spectroscopy. In addition, we observed that the excess carrier lifetime (tau(c)) drops by more than an order of magnitude from 3 ns in undoped Ge to <0.3 ns in doped Ge. Published by AIP Publishing.