Diode laser annealing on Ge/Si (100) epitaxial films grown by magnetron sputtering

• Epitaxial growth of Ge on Si by low-cost, safe and scalable magnetron sputtering
• Diode laser annealing is a fast and low-cost method to reduce TDD in Ge layer.
• Reduction of TDD by two orders of magnitude after laser scans of 40 ms exposure time
• The tensile strain in Ge increases after diode laser annealing.

In this work, epitaxial Ge films grown on Si by magnetron sputtering were annealed by diode laser as a replacement for conventional thermal annealing to reduce the threading dislocation density (TDD). After laser scans of millisecond exposure time, improvement of crystallinity and increase in tensile strain are observed in the Ge films. TDD of the Ge film is reduced by two orders of magnitude from 1010 cm− 2 to 108 cm− 2 after only three laser scans. Diode laser annealing is a fast and low-cost method to effectively reduce TDD in epitaxial Ge films on Si.