Invention of new chrystal growth techniques that permit the implementation of lattice-mismatched heteroepitaxial layers, notably -- but not exculsively -- on Si substrates. I believe this area of research is one of the most important for future directions in microelectronics.
As a result of my involvement with
heteroepitaxial infrared detectors on Si chip
I became an early proponent of
heteroepitaxy of lattice-mismatched materials
as a means of placing foreign semicinductors on Si substrates
in the form of special purpose islands that endow Si IC's with new
functions -- "teach new tricks to the old dog".
The most significant of my patents in this area, entitled
"Dislocation-Free Epitaxial Layer on a Lattice-Mismatched
Porous or otherwise Submicron Patterned Single Crystal Substrate",
proposes epitaxial growth on laterally patterned substrates
as a method of relieving stress and reducing
the formation of misfit dislocations
[ US Pat. 4,806,996 ].
This idea has found wide application.
Another related patent [ US Pat. 4,769,341 ] is entitled "Method of fabricating non-silicon materials on silicon substrate using an alloy of Sn and group IV semiconductors". It is concerned with the preparation of silicon substrates for the subsequent growth of materials with a larger lattice constant. Thus, an metastable silicon-tin alloy superlattice can be used as a substrate for a variety of foreign semiconductors, including Ge, GaAs, etc. This patent also discloses the possibility of obtaining an all-Column IV direct-gap semiconductor -- the germanium tin alloy Sn(x)Ge(1-x). This metastable SnGe alloy is predicted to become a direct-gap semiconductor for x larger than approximately 25% -- at which composition the alloy will be approximately lattice-matched to InP.
Key papers: 49, 61
Where the numbers refer to the attached list of Publications
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