Employing selective epitaxy to grow fully strained Si-Ge alloys in the source and drain (S/D) of a p-type metal-oxide semiconductor (PMOS) transistor compresses the Si-channel to significantly increase the hole mobility, and consequently, the speed of the device. Ge-rich alloys, where Ge constitutes = 50% of the alloy, are of particular interest...

Germanium (Ge) has a direct band gap (E0) of 0.81 eV at room temperature; however, applying small perturbations to Ge can shift E0 to lower energies resulting in dramatically improved performance for semiconductor and telecommunication applications. Stressing Ge using tensile strain provides one means by which to lower its E0, but the current best...