Crystallization and characterization of GeSn deposited on Si with Ge buffer layer by low-temperature sputter epitaxy

Recently, GeSn is drawing great deal of interests as one of the candidates for group-IV-driven optical interconnect for integration with the Si complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) owing to its pseudo-direct band structure and high electron and hole mobilities. However, the large lattice mismatch between GeSn and Si as well as the Sn segregation have been considered to be issues in preparing GeSn on Si. In this work, we deposit the GeSn films on Si by DC magnetron sputtering at a low temperature of 250°C and characterize the thin films. To reduce the stresses by GeSn onto Si, Ge buffer deposited under different processing conditions were inserted between Si and GeSn. As the result, polycrystalline GeSn domains with Sn atomic fraction of 6.51% on Si were successfully obtained and it has been demonstrated that the Ge buffer layer deposited at a higher sputtering power can relax the stress induced by the large lattice mismatch between Si substrate and GeSn thin films.