The paper summarizes a few basic properties of SiGe showing that SiGe
is an interesting material for high speed electronics. The advantage o
f using heterostructures in silicon-based technologies is demonstrated
by taking SiGe heterobipolar transistors as an example. First results
obtained with very fast and low-noise heterobipolar transistors are b
riefly mentioned. The paper is concluded by a short discussion of a fe
w optoelectronic properties observed in various Si/Ge and Si/Si1-xGex
strained-layer superlattices and quantum wells with particular emphasi
s on electroluminescence properties.