Luminescence and deep-level transient spectroscopy of grown dislocation-rich Si layers

Abstract

The charge deep-level transient spectroscopy (Q-DLTS) is applied to the study of the dislocation-rich Si layers grown on a surface composed of dense arrays of Ge islands prepared on the oxidized Si surface. This provides revealing three deep-level bands located at EV + 0.31 eV, EC – 0.35 eV and EC – 0.43 eV using the stripe-shaped p-i-n diodes fabricated on the basis of these layers. The most interesting observation is the local state recharging process which proceeds with low activation energy (∼50 meV) or without activation. The recharging may occur by carrier tunneling within deep-level bands owing to the high dislocation density ∼ 1011 - 1012 cm-2. This result is in favor of the suggestion on the presence of carrier transport between the deep states, which was previously derived from the excitation dependence of photoluminescence (PL) intensity. Electroluminescence (EL) spectra measured from the stripe edge of the same diodes contain two peaks centered near 1.32 and 1.55 μm. Comparison with PL spectra indicates that the EL peaks are generated from arsenic-contaminated and pure areas of the layers, respectively.