Strained Si/SiGe Materials for Micro-electronic Applications

Silicon-based metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) is the main device in the microelectronic technology. It has been scaled down successfully over several decades with higher package density and better device performance. However, when the transistor size is reduced to 0.1 mm, the device driving current cannot be improved much as it is required. One possible solution to the above challenge is to take advantages of bandgap engineering. If a compressive strain is possible to create in the channel region of silicon by SiGe layer, the heavy and light holes subband as well as six-fold degeneracy of the conduction band will be split. The effective masses of carriers in the channel region will be reduced due to the band structure splitting as well as the mobility of carriers will be increased and the device derive current will be enhanced considerably.