Silicon-Germanium Carbon Alloys

Book excerpt: Carbon (C) and Silicon Germanium (SiGe) work like a magic sauce. At least in small concentrations, they make everything taste better. It is remarkable enough that SiGe, a new material, and the heterobipolar transistor, a new device, appear on the brink of impacting the exploding wireless market. The addition of C to SiGe, albeit in small concentrations, looks to have breakthrough potential. Here, at last, is proof that materials science can put a rocket booster on the silicon-mind, the silicon transistor. Scientific excitement arises, as always, from the new possibilities a multicomponent materials system offers. Bandgaps can be changed, strains can be tuned, and properties can be tailored. This is catnip to the materials scientist. The wide array of techniques applied here to the SiGeC system bear testimony to the ingenious approaches now available for mastering the complexities of new materials