Self-assembled Ge/Si dots for faster field-effect transistors

Self-assembled and coherently strained germanium nanostructured dots are grown on prepatterned Si substrates along ordered lines. These precisely aligned nanocrystals are proposed to make up the central unit of a dot-based field-effect transistor (DotFET). The strain-induced band edge splitting and the inherently smaller effective masses of charge carriers in Ge/Si dots promise faster transistors than are possible for conventional pure Si devices. Thick relaxed buffer layers-mandatory for any existing high-speed SiGe field-effect devices-are no longer required. The DotFET is straight-forward, defect-free, and fully compatible with current complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology.