Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
The main objective of this work is to investigate the possibility of combining pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and pulsed laser annealing to realize p-type Si1-xGex thin films suitable for post-processing MEMS on top of standard pre-fabricated driving electronics. The main advantage of this approach is that the substrate is kept at a CMOS backend compatible temperature throughout the deposition and thus the MEMS integration process will have no thermal impact on the underlying electronics. In addition, it is demonstrated that PLD Si1-xGex has good adhesion to SiO2 and accordingly there is no need for a silicon nucleation which is the case for LPCVD and PECVD. Furthermore, this technique is much more economical than CVD as it does don't imply using expensive gas precursors such as germane and silane.