We report the first well-resolved band-edge luminescence from excitons confined in fully strained SiGe quantum wells grown on Si. At liquid-He temperatures the photoluminescence is due to shallow bound excitons, and in addition to a no-phonon line, phonon-assisted transitions involving TA phonons and Si-Si, Si-Ge, and Ge-Ge TO phonons are observed. At higher temperatures the spectra are dominated by free-exciton luminescence. Quantum-confinement effects shift the observed free-exciton edge above the bulk strained band-gap energy, and also influence the relative intensities of the three TO-phonon replicas.

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We report a new photoluminescence process in epitaxial Sil-,GeX layers grown on Si by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition which we attribute to the recombination of excitons localized at random alloy fluctuations. This luminescence is characterized by saturation at very low excitation densities (N 100 PW cm-*), very long decay times (> 1 ms), and high quantum efficiency at low excitation. We have directly measured an external photoluminescence quantum efficiency of 11.5 *2%.

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Coherent Si1−xGex alloys and multilayers synthesized by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on Si(100) substrates have been characterized by low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Phonon-resolved transitions originating from excitons bound to shallow impurities were observed in addition to a broad band of intense luminescence. The broad PL band was predominant when the alloy layer thickness was greater than 40–100 Å, depending on x and the strain energy density. The strength of the broad PL band was correlated with the areal density (up to ∼109 cm−2) of strain perturbations (local lattice dilation ∼15 Å in diameter) observed in plan-view TEM. Thinner alloy layers exhibited phonon-resolved PL spectra, similar to bulk material, but shifted in energy due to strain and hole quantum confinement. Photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy, external quantum efficiency, time-resolved PL decay, together with the power and temperature dependence of luminescence intensity, have been used to characterize Si1−xGex/Si heterostructures exhibiting both types of PL spectra. The role of MBE growth parameters in determining optical properties was investigated by changing the quantum well thickness and growth temperature. The transition from phonon-resolved, near-band-gap luminescence in thin layers to the broad PL band typical of thick layers is discussed in terms of a strain energy balance model which predicts a ‘‘transition thickness’’ which decreases with increase in x.

Intense photoluminescence (PL) from strained, epitaxial Si1−xGex alloys grown by molecular beam epitaxy is reported with measured internal quantum efficiencies up to 31% from random alloy layers, single buried strained layers, and multiple quantum wells. Samples deposited at ∼400 °C exhibited low PL intensity, whereas annealing at ∼600 °C enhanced the intensity by as much as two orders of magnitude. This anneal treatment was found to be optimal for removal of grown-in defect complexes without creating a significant density of misfit dislocations. PL peak energies at 4.2 K varied from 620 to 990 meV for Ge fractions from 0.53 to 0.06, respectively. Efficient PL was due to exciton accumulation in the strained Si1−xGex layers of single and multiple quantum wells, where the band gap was locally reduced. Optical transitions associated with the PL occurred without phonon assistance.