Peter Grünberg Institute 9 (PGI-9) and JARA-Fundamentals of Future Information Technologies (JARA-FIT), Forschungszentrum Juelich, Juelich, Germany, Central Institute for Engineering, Electronics and Analytics – Analytics, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Juelich, Germany, Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology (LMN), Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland, Institute of Microwaves and Photonics, School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom, CEA, LETI, MINATEC Campus, Grenoble, France, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France, IBM Research – Zurich, Rueschlikon, Switzerland, Intel Mobile Communications GmbH – Munich, Neubiberg, Switzerland

SiGeSn ternaries are grown on Ge-buffered Si wafers incorporating Si or Sn contents of up to 15 at%. The ternaries exhibit layer thicknesses up to 600 nm, while maintaining a high crystalline quality. Tuning of stoichiometry and strain, as shown by means of absorption measurements, allows bandgap engineering in the short-wave infrared range of up to about 2.6 µm. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence experiments indicate ternaries near the indirect-to-direct bandgap transition, proving their potential for ternary-based light emitters in the aforementioned optical range. The ternaries' layer relaxation is also monitored to explore their use as strain-relaxed buffers, since they are of interest not only for light emitting diodes investigated in this paper but also for many other optoelectronic and electronic applications. In particular, the authors have epitaxially grown a GeSn/SiGeSn multiquantum well heterostructure, which employs SiGeSn as barrier material to efficiently confine carriers in GeSn wells. Strong room temperature light emission from fabricated light emitting diodes proves the high potential of this heterostructure approach. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

group IV, heterostructures, light emitting diodes, SiGeSn, silicon photonics

Diodes, Energy gap, Germanium, Heterojunctions, Infrared radiation, Light emission, Photonics, Semiconductor quantum wells, Silicon wafers, Absorption measurements, Electronic application, Group-IV, High-crystalline quality, SiGeSn, Silicon photonics, Strain relaxed buffers, Temperature dependent photoluminescences, Light emitting diodes