High quality, giant crystalline-Ge stripes on insulating substrate by rapid-thermal-annealing of Sn-doped amorphous-Ge in solid-liquid coexisting region

Formation of large-grain (≥30 μm) Ge crystals on insulating substrates is strongly desired to achieve high-speed thin-film transistors. For this purpose, we propose the methods of Sn-doping into amorphous-Ge combined with rapid-thermal-annealing (RTA) in the solid-liquid coexisting temperature region for the Ge-Sn alloy system. The densities of micro-crystal-nuclei formed in this temperature region become low by tuning the RTA temperature close to the liquidus curve, which enhances the lateral growth of GeSn. Thanks to the very small segregation coefficient of Sn, almost all Sn atoms segregate toward edges of the stripes during growth. Agglomeration of GeSn degrades the surface morphologies; however, it is significantly improved by lowering the initial Sn concentration. As a result, pure Ge with large crystal grains (∼40 μm) with smooth surface are obtained by optimizing the initial Sn concentration as low as 3 ∼ 5%. Lateral growth lengths are further increased through decreasing the number of nuclei in stripes by narrowing stripe width. In this way, high-crystallinity giant Ge crystals (∼200 μm) are obtained for the stripe width of 3 μm. This “Si-seed free” technique for formation of large-grain pure Ge crystals is very useful to realize high-performance thin-film devices on insulator.