IBM researchers in Zurich and New York say they have developed a process that will allow crystals grown from compound semiconductor materials to be integrated onto silicon wafers.
"The whole semiconductor industry wants to keep Moore's Law going. We need better performing transistors as we continue scaling and transistors based on silicon won't give us improvements anymore," said Heinz Schmid, a researcher at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory.
The team fabricated a range of single crystal III–V nanostructures using template assisted selective epitaxy and metal organic chemical vapour deposition. This allowed the team to define oxide templates lithographically and to fill them via epitaxy.
"What sets this work apart from other methods is that the compound semiconductor does not contain detrimental defects and that the process is fully compatible with current chip fabrication technology," said Schmid. "Importantly, the method is also economically viable."
While more development will be required to achieve the same control over performance in III-V devices as currently exists for silicon, Schmid said the method will be key to integrating stacked materials on a silicon platform.