Microsecond carrier lifetimes in strained silicon-germanium alloys grown by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition

We report generation lifetimes of over 1 μs in Si0.82Ge0.18 epitaxial strained layers grown by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition on silicon substrates. By using a pulsed metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor technique, we were able to probe the minority-carrier properties of a layer of Si0.82Ge0.18 sandwiched between two epitaxial layers of silicon. We also show that the band gap and the intrinsic carrier concentration are important when relating experimental results to the generation lifetime τg.