Similarity of Stranski-Krastanow growth of Ge/Si and SiGe/Si (001)

This study investigates the onset of islanding (Stranski-Krastanow transition) in strained pure germanium (Ge) and dilute silicon-germanium (SiGe) alloy layers grown by chemical vapour deposition on Si(001) substrates. Integration of compositional profiles is compared to a novel method for quantification of X-ray maps acquired in cross-sectional scanning transmission electron microscopy, together with simulations of surface segregation of Ge. We show that Si1−xGex alloys for germanium concentrations x ≤ 0.27 grow two-dimensionally and stay flat up to considerable layer thicknesses, while layers with concentrations in the range 0.28 < x ≤ 1 form islands after deposition of ∼3.0/x monolayers (=quarter unit cells in the diamond lattice, ML). The uncertainty in the amount of deposited material for pure Ge is ±(0.2–0.3) ML. Modelling shows that of the amount of germanium deposited, 0.7 ML segregate towards the free surface so that only ∼2.3/x ML are directly incorporated in the layer within a few nanometres, in good agreement with our measurements. For pure Ge (x = 1), this thickness is smaller than most values quoted in the literature, which we attribute to the high sensitivity of our method to fractional monolayer changes in the effective chemical width of such thin layers