Ultrafast carrier recombination in highly n-doped Ge-on-Si films

We study the femtosecond carrier dynamics of n-type doped and biaxially strained Ge-on-Si films which occurs upon impulsive photoexcitation by means of broadband near-IR transient absorption spectroscopy. The modeling of the experimental data takes into account the static donor density in a modified rate equation for the description of the temporal recombination dynamics. The measurements confirm the negligible contribution at a high n-type doping concentration, in the 1019 cm−3 range, of Auger processes as compared to defect-related Shockley-Read-Hall recombination. Energy resolved dynamics reveal further insights into the doping-related band structure changes and suggest a reshaping of direct and indirect conduction band valleys to a single effective valley along with a significant spectral broadening of the optical transitions.