Anthony successfully defended his masters thesis on August 2, 2010.

TITLE:
Ge PIN on Si

ABSTRACT:
High speed optical interconnects that can be integrated with silicon is being extensively studied to achieve high speed, low noise chip to chip communication. Since silicon does not absorb the standard wavelength in telecommunication (1.55 micron) other materials are required that do not have matching lattice constants to silicon for the photo detectors in the interconnects. Two types of thin buffer layers have been introduced to prevent dislocation propagation into the device layers to achieve maximum performance. Fabrication of the photo detectors must also follow standard procedures in the semiconductor industry to make the devices mass producible.

The devices studied in this research employed surfactant mediated growth of germanium on silicon with antimony as the surfactant. A brief discussion of the growth method of Molecular Beam Epitaxy and device parameters will be discussed with a large focus on the fabrication process used to create the devices.