Heterostructures On Silicon One Step Further With Silicon

In the field of logic circuits in microelectronics, the leadership of silicon is now strongly established due to the achievement of its technology. Near unity yield of one million transistor chips on very large wafers (6 inches today, 8 inches tomorrow) are currently accomplished in industry. The superiority of silicon over other material can be summarized as follow: - The Si/Si0 interface is the most perfect passivating interface ever 2 obtained (less than 10" e y-I cm2 interface state density) - Silicon has a large thermal conductivity so that large crystals can be pulled. - Silicon is a hard material so that large wafers can be handled safely. - Silicon is thermally stable up to 1100°C so that numerous metallurgical operations (oxydation, diffusion, annealing ... ) can be achieved safely. - There is profusion of silicon on earth so that the base silicon wafer is cheap. Unfortunatly, there are fundamental limits that cannot be overcome in silicon due to material properties: laser action, infra-red detection, high mobility for instance. The development of new technologies of deposition and growth has opened new possibilities for silicon based structures. The well known properties of silicon can now be extended and properly used in mixed structures for areas such as opto-electronics, high-speed devices. This has been pioneered by the integration of a GaAs light emitting diode on a silicon based structure by an MIT group in 1985.

The NATO Special Programme Panel on Condensed Systems of Low Dimensionality began its work in 1985 at a time of considerable activity in the field. The Panel has since funded many Advanced Research Workshops, Advanced Study Institutes, Cooperative Research Grants and Research Visits across the breadth of its remit, which stretches from self-organizing organic molecules to semiconductor structures having two, one and zero dimensions. The funded activities, especially the workshops, have allowed researchers from within NATO countries to exchange ideas and work together at a period of development of the field when such interactions are most valuable. Such timely support has undoubtedly assisted the development of national programs, particularly in the countries of the alliance wishing to strengthen their science base. A closing Workshop to mark the end of the Panel's activities was organized in Marmaris, Turkey from April 23-27, 1990, with the same title as the Panel: Condensed systems of Low Dimensionality. This volume contains papers presented at that meeting, which sought to bring together chemists, physicists and engineers from across the spectrum of the Panel's activities to discuss topics of current interest in their special fields and to exchange ideas about the effects of low dimensionality. As the following pages show, this is a topic of extraordinary interest and challenge which produces entirely new scientific phenomena, and at the same time offers the possibility of novel technological applications.

Silicon carbide and other group IV-IV materials in their amorphous, microcrystalline, and crystalline forms have a wide variety of applications.The contributions to this volume report recent developments and trends in the field. The purpose is to make available the current state of understanding of the materials and their potential applications. Eachcontribution focuses on a particular topic, such as preparation methods, characterization, and models explaining experimental findings. The volume also contains the latest results in the exciting field of SiGe/Si heterojunction bipolar transistors. The reader will find this book valuable as a reference source, an up-to-date and in-depth overview of this field, and, most importantly, as a window into the immense range of reading potential applications of silicon carbide. It is essential for scientists, engineers and students interested in electronic materials, high-speed heterojunction devices, and high-temperature optoelectronics.

Defect control in semiconductors is a key technology for realizing the ultimate possibilities of modern electronics. The basis of such control lies in an integrated knowledge of a variety of defect properties. From this viewpoint, the volume discusses defect-related problems in connection with defect control in semiconducting materials, such as silicon, III-V, II-VI compounds, organic semiconductors, heterostructure, etc.The conference brought together scientists in the field of fundamental research and engineers involved in application related to electronic devices in order to promote future research activity in both fields and establish a fundamental knowledge of defect control. The main emphasis of the 254 papers presented in this volume is on the control of the concentration, distribution, structural and electronic states of any types of defects including impurities as well as control of the electrical, optical and other activities of defects. Due to the extensive length of the contents, only the number of papers presented per session is listed below.

"Written by engineers for engineers (with over 150 International Editorial Advisory Board members),this highly lauded resource provides up-to-the-minute information on the chemical processes, methods, practices, products, and standards in the chemical, and related, industries. "

This book reviews the recent advances and current technologies used to produce microelectronic and optoelectronic devices from compound semiconductors. It provides a complete overview of the technologies necessary to grow bulk single-crystal substrates, grow hetero-or homoepitaxial films, and process advanced devices such as HBT's, QW diode lasers, etc.

Today’s solar cell multi-GW market is dominated by crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer technology, however new cell concepts are entering the market. One very promising solar cell design to answer these needs is the silicon hetero-junction solar cell, of which the emitter and back surface field are basically produced by a low temperature growth of ultra-thin layers of amorphous silicon. In this design, amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) constitutes both „emitter“ and „base-contact/back surface field“ on both sides of a thin crystalline silicon wafer-base (c-Si) where the electrons and holes are photogenerated; at the same time, a-Si:H passivates the c-Si surface. Recently, cell efficiencies above 23% have been demonstrated for such solar cells. In this book, the editors present an overview of the state-of-the-art in physics and technology of amorphous-crystalline heterostructure silicon solar cells. The heterojunction concept is introduced, processes and resulting properties of the materials used in the cell and their heterointerfaces are discussed and characterization techniques and simulation tools are presented.

Proceedings of a NATO ARW held in Venice, Italy, May 9-13, 1989