| The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) forecasts that current semiconductor technology based on the mainstream silicon CMOS platform is approaching its scaling limit. One emerging technology which may augment CMOS and extend its operational lifetime is tunneling devices together with transistors. Tunnel diode based circuits have superior performance regarding high speed operation concurrently with low power consumption. Si-based resonant interband tunnel diodes (RITD) developed by this research group that are grown epitaxially using atmospheric pressure/reduced pressure chemical vapor deposition (AP/RP-CVD) and low temperature molecular beam epitaxy (LT-MBE), now enable monolithic integration with Si CMOS and SiGe technology.;This thesis focuses on the study of improvement of the performance of RITD samples grown by CVD and LT-MBE epitaxy technology including silicon-based backward diodes for direct detection of millimeter radiation, SiGe nanopillars to form Ge quantum dots for quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA), and the plasma damage from inductively-coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) processes. Based on the research studies, the SiGe RITDs shows tremendous potential for future device market opportunities with numerous applications. |
