GE+ ION-IMPLANTATION - A COMPETING TECHNOLOGY

Difficulties with the incorporation of SiGe epitaxial growth technolog ies into established silicon whole wafer processes are delaying the co mmercialisation of SiGe technology. In this paper the possibility of u sing an alternative, well proven technology, namely ion implantation, is considered. Experiments reported in the literature suggest that bot h strained and relaxed device worthy SiGe layers, with graded interfac es, can be synthesised by Ge+ ion implantation followed by a two step thermal anneal to achieve solid phase epitaxial growth and annihilatio n of electrically active defects. It is concluded that for specific de vice architectures both heterojunction bipolar and MOS devices could b e commercially realised whilst other applications, such as buried SiGe waveguides and devices incorporating compositionally graded layers, m ay also be viable. The technology warrants further investigation.