Renaissance Germanium

锗，作为一种半导体材料，正经历着复兴——甚至可能与硅相媲美。随着硅的终结游戏升温，锗正吸引着巨大的兴趣。许多人大胆地认为，在硅发展的预期终点（2020年左右）之后，它将成为维持类硅技术和相关设备的潜在候选者，并将该技术带入令人兴奋的新领域和性能体系。这一建议着手探索一些有趣的方面和结果的基本电子结构的Ge以前没有研究过。有很好的理论论据表明，如果载流子沿非常规晶体学方向移动，并且锗处于应变状态，则某些关键性能参数可以显着提高。我们将研究这些新环境如何影响载流子（电子和空穴）的速度/迁移率和有效质量，以及阻碍它们运动（散射）的过程。

Germanium, in at the birth of the electronics revolution, is experiencing a renaissance as a semiconductor material - possibly even rivalling silicon, and is attracting huge interest as the silicon end-game hots up. It is perceived, audaciously but by many, as a potential candidate to maintain silicon-like technology and associated devices well beyond the envisaged end of silicon development (around 2020) and also take the technology into exciting new areas and performance regimes. This proposal sets out to explore some of the intriguing aspects and consequences of the fundamental electronic structure of Ge not previously examined. There are good theoretical arguments to suggest that some critical performance parameters can be dramatically enhanced if carriers travel in non-conventional crystallographic directions and when the germanium is under strain. We will investigate how these new environments affect the velocity/mobility and effective mass of the carriers (electrons and holes) and the processes that impede their motion (scattering).