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“Barrierless” Misfit Dislocation Nucleation in SiGe/Si Strained Layer Epitaxy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2011

D.D. Perovic  and
D.C. Houghton
D.D. Perovic
Affiliation:
Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science, 184 College Street, University of Toronto, Toronto, M5S 1A4, Canada
D.C. Houghton
Affiliation:
Institute for Microstructural Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, K1A 0R6, Canada
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Abstract

The study of the critical thickness/strain phenomenon inherent in metastable, layered heterostructures has led to the development of several models which describe elastic strain relaxation. Hitherto, the nucleation of misfit dislocations required for coherency breakdown is the least well understood aspect of strain relaxation, due to the paucity of experimental data. Moreover, existing theoretical calculations predict relatively large activation energy barriers (>10 eV) for misfit dislocation nucleation in relatively low misfit (<2%) systems. In this work it will be shown that the nucleation of misfit dislocations can occur spontaneously demonstrating a vanishingly small activation energy barrier. Specifically, experimental studies of a wide range of GexSi1−x/Si (x< 0.5) hetero-structures, grown by MBE and CVD techniques, have provided quantitative data from bulk specimens on the observed misfit dislocation nucleation rate and activation energy using large-area diagnostic techniques (eg. chemical etching/Nomarski microscopy). In parallel, the strained layer microstructure was studied in detail using crosssectional and plan-view electron microscopy in order to identify a new dislocation nucleation mechanism, the ‘double half-loop’ source. From the combined macroscopic and microscopic analyses, a theoretical treatment has been developed based on nucleation stress and energy criteria which predicts a “barrierless” nucleation process exists even at low misfits (< 1%). Accordingly, the observed misfit dislocation nucleation event has been found both experimentally and theoretically to be rate-controlled solely by Peierls barrier dependent, glide-activated processes with activation energies of ∼2 eV.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 263: Symposium F – Mechanisms of Heteroepitaxial Growth , 1992 , 391
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1992

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