III-V semiconductors present interesting properties and are already used in electronics, lightening and photonic devices. Integration of III-V devices onto a Si CMOS platform is already in production using III-V devices transfer. A promising way consists in using hetero-epitaxy processes to grow the III-V materials directly on Si and at the right place. To reach this objective, some challenges still needed to be overcome. In this contribution, we will show how to overcome the different challenges associated to the heteroepitaxy and integration of III-As onto a silicon platform. We present solutions to get rid of antiphase domains for GaAs grown on exact Si(100). To reduce the threading dislocations density, efficient ways based on either insertion of InGaAs/GaAs multilayers defect filter layers or selective epitaxy in cavities are implemented. All these solutions allows fabricating electrically pumped laser structures based on InAs quantum dots active region, required for photonic and sensing applications.
Part of the book: Post-Transition Metals
Monolithic growth of III-V materials onto Si substrates is appealing for realizing practical on-chip light sources for Si-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Nevertheless, the material dissimilarities between III-V materials and Si substrates inevitably lead to the formation of crystalline defects, including antiphase domains (APBs), threading dislocations (TDs), and micro-cracks. These nontrivial defects lead to impaired device performance and must be suppressed to a sufficiently low value before propagating into the active region. In this chapter, we review current approaches to control the formation of defects and achieve high-quality GaAs monolithically grown on Si substrates. An APB-free GaAs on complementary-metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible Si (001) substrates grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) only and a low TD density GaAs buffer layer with strained-layer superlattice (SLS) and asymmetric step-graded (ASG) InGaAs layers are demonstrated. Furthermore, recent advances in InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) lasers as efficient on-chip light sources grown on the patterned Si substrates for PICs are outlined.
Part of the book: Thin Films