Single-Crystal Germanium Growth on Amorphous Silicon

Growing single‐crystal semiconductors directly on an amorphous substrate without epitaxy or wafer bonding has long been a significant fundamental challenge in materials science. Such technology is especially important for semiconductor devices that require cost‐effective, high‐throughput fabrication, including thin‐film solar cells and transistors on glass substrates as well as large‐scale active photonic circuits on Si using back‐end‐of‐line CMOS technology. This work demonstrates a CMOS‐compatible method of fabricating high‐quality germanium single crystals on amorphous silicon at low temperatures of