Strain driven Group IV photonic devices: applications to light emission and detection

Straining the crystal lattice of a semiconductor is a very powerful tool enabling controlling many properties such as its emission wavelength, its mobility…Modulating and controlling the strain in a reversible fashion and in the multi% range is a forefront challenge. Strain amplification is a rather recent technique allowing accumulating very significant amounts of strain in a micronic constriction, such as a microbridge (up to 4.9% for Ge [1]), which deeply drives the electronic properties of the starting semiconductor. Nevertheless, the architectures of GeSn microlasers under strong deformation and recently demonstrated in the IRIG institute [2] cannot afford modulating on demand the applied strain and thus the emission wavelength within the very same device, the latter being frozen “by design”. The target of this 18 months post doc is to fabricate photonic devices of the MOEMS family (Micro-opto-electromechanical systems) combining the local strain amplification in the semiconductor and actuation features via an external stimulus, with the objectives to go towards: 1-a wide band wavelength tunable laser microsource and 2-new types of photodetectors, both in a Group IV technology (Si, Ge and Ge1-xSnx). The candidate will conduct several tasks at the crossroads between fabrication and optoelectronic characterization:

a-simulation of the mechanical operation of the expected devices using FEM softwares, and calculation of the electronic states of the strained semiconductor

b-fabrication of devices at the Plateforme Technologique Amont (lithography, dry etching, metallization, bonding), based on results of a

c-optical and material characterization of the fabricated devices (PL, photocurrent, microRaman, SEM…) at IRIG-PHELIQS and LETI.

A PhD in the field of semiconductors physics or photonics, as well as skills in microfabrication are required.

[1] A. Gassenq et al, Appl. Phys. Lett.108, 241902 (2016)

[2] J. Chrétien et al, ACS Photonics2019, 6, 10, 2462–2469

Facebook

Twitter