Laterally aligned Ge/Si islands: a new concept for faster field-effect transistors

Self-assembled and coherently strained Ge dots were grown on a Si/SiGe superlattice, which was deposited on a flat Si(001) substrate surface patterned with a regular array of straight trenches. The superlattice translates the surface modulation of the substrate into a strain-field modulation, which causes the Ge dots on its surface to form along straight lines above the buried trenches. This approach provides self-assembled Ge dots with excellent lateral periodicity, which might be useful for fabricating dot-based field-effect-transistors (DotFETs). Here, we propose the concept of a modulation-doped p-channel DotFET (p-MOD-DotFET). The p-MOD-DotFET relies on embedded Ge-rich nanostructures, which provide p-channels through the Ge-rich dots. A high Ge concentration in the dots is desirable in order to exploit the high hole mobility of Ge-rich material. We show that the commonly observed Si–Ge intermixing during Si capping of Ge dots can be suppressed by overgrowing the islands at low temperature.