Advances in Atomic Layer Doping for Silicon Optoelectronics

Atomic Precision Advanced Manufacturing (APAM) with Atomic Layer Doping (ALDo) uses surface chemistry to place dopants in silicon with concentrations exceeding the solid solubility limit and thus provides access to ultradoped semiconductor materials to enable novel functionality. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that ALDo layers in silicon fundamentally alter the band structure, creating the possibility of all-silicon optoelectronic devices. However, APAM with ALDo has traditionally been limited to laboratory-scale serial device fabrication with low throughput, with only n-type doping available. Here, I will discuss our recent advances in ALDo including band structure manipulation, the introduction of p-type doping, and demonstration of ALDo compatibility with typical silicon device fabrication processes. Together, these advances provide a path toward manufacturing all-silicon optoelectronic devices.

This work was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at Sandia National Laboratories under projects 213017 and 226347 and was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a U.S. DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences user facility. This abstract has been authored by an employee of National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This abstract describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government.