GERMANIUM BASED DEVICES INCLUDING APPLICATIONS: A PERSPECTIVE REVIEW

Njapba S. Augustine¹ and Galadanci M. S. Garba² 

ABSTRACT

 Germanium single crystal with high crystalline perfection is nowadays among the purest elemental semiconductor material available as a result of years of perfecting its growth techniques. A lot of progress in the crystal-growth techniques of nanostructure devices have been achieved of recent, such as the Czochralski and Molecular beam epitaxy or Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) that allow for the formation of crystalline layers with atomic precision. With these methods the realization of quantum structure devices can be achieved by growing on top of a smooth substrate a material with a different lattice constant. Atoms in a perfect crystal are orderly arranged. Single crystal Germanium is a well-investigated material that is applied in many advanced microelectronic and optoelectronic devices such as, optoelectronics, bio-imaging, solar cells, field effect transistors, fiber optic cables, polymerization catalyst and gamma-ray detector etc, Germanium as light source emit at 1550 nm wavelength and high performance photodetectors, modulators, waveguides and other components have been demonstrated. There are still so many areas of application of this important semiconductor material particularly now at the nanoscale.

Keywords: Germanium, crystalline, quantum structure, lattice constant,        optoelectronic, transistor.