Toward III-V/Si co-integration by controlling biatomic steps on hydrogenated Si(001)

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to control biatomic steps on hydrogenated Si(001) surfaces, enabling the growth of APB-free III-V layers on silicon, which advances silicon photonics integration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to manipulate Si(001) surface steps via hydrogen annealing, facilitating defect-free III-V/Si co-integration.

Findings

Double-layer steps form during hydrogen annealing under specific conditions.

Optimized annealing suppresses antiphase boundaries in GaAs on Si.

Experimental validation in industrial MOCVD confirms the method's effectiveness.

Abstract

The integration of III-V on silicon is still a hot topic as it will open up a way to co-integrate Si CMOS logic with photonic vices. To reach this aim, several hurdles should be solved, and more particularly the generation of antiphase boundaries (APBs) at the III-V/Si(001) interface. Density functional theory (DFT) has been used to demonstrate the existence of a double-layer steps on nominal Si(001) which is formed during annealing under proper hydrogen chemical potential. This phenomenon could be explained by the formation of dimer vacancy lines which could be responsible for the preferential and selective etching of one type of step leading to the double step surface creation. To check this hypothesis, different experiments have been carried in an industrial 300 mm MOCVD where the total pressure during the anneal step of Si(001) surface has been varied. Under optimized conditions, an APBs-free GaAs layer was grown on a nominal Si(001) surface paving the way for III-V integration on silicon industrial platform.