Germanium Extremely Heavily Doped by Ion-Implantation and Laser Annealing: A Photoluminescence Study
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ABSTRACTIt has been shown previously that dopant concentrations far above the equilibrium solubility limit can be obtained in semiconductors by pulsed laser annealing of heavily ion implanted material. We exploit this fact to study the photoluminescence of germanium with dopant concentrations up to 1021 cm−3. From this study we obtain information on the filling of higher lying band minima and the shift of the optical band gap as a function of carrier concentration over a much wider range than accessible with bulk doped material. In addition it is shown that photoluminescence provides a diagnostic tool to characterize implanted layers.