Heteroepitaxial Integration of Single Crystalline Ge(111) Layers on Si(111) via PrO2(111) Heterostructures

Epitaxial Ge(111) layers were grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (WE) oil cubic PrO2(111) / Si(111) systems. The achieved Ge-on-Insulator heterostructures were widely characterized by a combination of in-situ and ex-situ techniques. It was shown that an interaction between the PrO2(111) layer and the growing semiconductor deposit occurs in the initial Ge evaporation stages, which results in a complete reduction of the buffer oxide to a cubic Pr2O3(111) film. Oil Such a thermodynamically stable support Ge grows epitaxially in the Volmer-Weber mode, forming single crystalline, (111)-oriented islands. By suitably tuning the deposition parameters, these islands coalesce in a closed, atomically smooth, single crystalline Ge(111) layer with the same type-A orientation as the Si(111) substrate.