Band Discontinuities in Gallium Phosphide/Crystalline Silicon Heterojunctions Studied by Internal Photoemission

Abstract

We measured the band lineup of gallium phosphide (GaP) on crystalline silicon (c-Si) heterojunctions (HJs) by using internal photoemission (IPE), where the heterojunctions were prepared by using solid-source molecular beam epitaxy. It was found that the conduction-band and valence-band discontinuities, denoted by ΔEc and ΔEv, are 0.09±0.01 and 1.05±0.01 eV, respectively. By performing measurements on samples with different GaP layer thicknesses, we clarified that ΔEv of the present GaP-on-Si HJs is not affected by strain normal to the growth direction. The values of ΔEc and ΔEv obtained for the GaP-on-Si HJs are significantly different from those reported for thin Si-on-GaP HJs, and the implications of this discrepancy are briefly discussed.