Ion-beam induced epitaxial crystallization of GexSi1-x/Si heterostructures

Amorphous GexSi1-x layers are shown to crystallize epitaxially from an underlying (100) oriented Si substrate when irradiated with 1.5 MeV Ne ions at temperatures as low as 275 degrees C. For a given Ne fluence, the extent of crystallization is shown to increase with increasing Ge context, consistent with the increased defect production rate in these alloys. It has also been demonstrated that strained layer configurations can be grown by ion-beam annealing and that such layers exhibit a commensurate to incommensurate transformation within the same composition range as layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy