Holes Outperform Electrons in Group IV Semiconductor Materials
M. Myronov, J. B. Kycia, P. Waldron, Weihong Jiang, Pedro Barrios, Alex Bogan, P. T. Coleridge, Sergei Studenikin
Abstract
A record‐high mobility of holes, reaching 4.3 × 10 6 cm 2 V −1 s −1 at 300 mK in an epitaxial strained germanium (s‐Ge) semiconductor, grown on a standard silicon wafer, is reported. This major breakthrough is achieved due to the development of state‐of‐the‐art epitaxial growth technology culminating in superior monocrystalline quality of the s‐Ge material platform with a very low density of background impurities and other imperfections. As a consequence, the hole mobility in s‐Ge appears to be ≈2 times higher than the highest electron mobility in strained silicon. In addition to the record mobility, this material platform reveals a unique combination of properties, which are a very large and tuneable effective g *‐factor (>18), a very low percolation density (5 × 10 9 cm −2 ) and a small effective mass (0.054 m 0 ). This long‐sought combination of parameters in one material system is important for the research and development of low‐temperature electronics with reduced Joule heating and for quantum‐electronics circuits based on spin qubits.