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Research Interests

Dr. Alison Baski


Silicon Surfaces
One of my primary areas of interest, silicon, is a material that has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry. Properties of silicon which have led to its dominance in the electronics industry include: a nearly perfect SiO2 passivating interface, large wafer size, robustness, and low cost. Although silicon is the material of choice for VLSI technology, it does lack a few highly desirable properties, such as laser action and high mobility. To overcome this limitation, there has been a strong effort to integrate materials having such properties with standard Si integrated circuit technology, i.e. to grow heterostructures on silicon. Recent examples include GaAs grown on Si for optoelectronic and high speed applications, HgCdTe grown on Si for far-infrared detection, and Si/Ge heterostructures for heterojunction bipolar transistors. The challenge of thee systems lies in understanding and controlling the interface between the various materials, where lattice mismatch and different thermal expansion coefficients can lead to misfit dislocations which impair device performance. A number of approaches have been explored to minimize the effect of such dislocations, ranging from manipulation of the growth conditions to the choice of substrate orientation, but much remains to be done.

  • A. A. Baski and L. J. Whitman: "Ga-induced Restructuring of Si(112) and Si(337)," J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B, in press (1996).

  • A. A. Baski, S. C. Erwin and L. J. Whitman: "A Stable High-Index Surface of Silicon: Si(5 5 12)," Science 269, 1556-1560 (1995).

  • A. A. Baski and L. J. Whitman: "A Scanning Tunneling Microscopy Study of Hydrogen Adsorption on Si(112)," J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 13, 1469-1472 (1995).

  • A. A. Baski and L. J. Whitman: "Quasiperiodic Nanoscale Faceting of High-Index Si Surfaces," Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 956-959 (1995).

  • K. Bierbaum, M. Grunze, A. A. Baski, L. F. Chi, W. Shrepp and H. Fuchs: "Growth of Self-assembled n-alkytrichlorosilane Films on Si(100) Investigated by Atomic Force Microscopy," Langmuir 11, 2143-2150 (1995).

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