First-principles calculations are used to calculate the strain dependencies of the binding and diffusionactivation energies for Ge adatoms on both Si~001! and Ge~001! surfaces. Our calculations reveal that the binding and activation energies on a strained Ge~001! surface increase and decrease, respectively, by 0.21 and 0.12 eV per percent compressive strain. For a growth temperature of 600 °C, ...

The rural Nigeria has the largest number of citizens with not less than 75% of the country’s total population living in the rural areas. It is the collective desire of this vast majority of the Nigerian population to access development irrespective of political, economic and social status. The local government is the most veritable agent of developing the rural areas. This is informed by the lo...

Localized Ge nano-dot formation by laser treatment was investigated and discussed in terms of strain distribution. The advantage of this technique is patterning localization of nano-dots without selective epitaxial growth, reducing costs and improving throughput. Self-assembled Ge nano-dots produced by excimer laser annealing statistically distributed dot density and size dependent on laser ene...

To explore spintronics applications for Ge nanowire heterostructures formed by thermal annealing, it is critical to develop a ferromagnetic germanide with high Curie temperature and take advantage of the high-quality interface between Ge and the formed ferromagnetic germanide. In this work, we report, for the first time, the formation and characterization of Mn(5)Ge(3)/Ge/Mn(5)Ge(3) nanowire tr...

Statistical heterogeneity and small-study effects are 2 major issues affecting the validity of meta-analysis. In this article, we introduce the concept of a limit meta-analysis, which leads to shrunken, empirical Bayes estimates of study effects after allowing for small-study effects. This in turn leads to 3 model-based adjusted pooled treatment-effect estimators and associated confidence inter...

The structural, mechanical, anisotropic, electronic and thermal properties of Si, Si0.667Ge0.333, Si0.333Ge0.667 and Ge in P4₂/ncm phase are investigated in this work. The calculations have been performed with an ultra-soft pseudopotential by using the generalized gradient approximation and local density approximation in the framework of density functional theory. The achieved results for the l...

Epitaxial growth of a highly strained, coherent SiGe alloy shell around a Ge nanowire core is investigated as a method to achieve surface passivation and carrier confinement, important in realizing nanowire devices. The high photoluminescence intensity observed from the core-shell nanowires with spectral features similar to that of bulk Ge indicates effective surface passivation. Thermal stabil...

Here, we introduce and give an overview of a general lithography-free method to fabricate silicide and germanide micro-/nanostructures on Si and Ge surfaces through metal-vapor-initiated endoepitaxial growth. Excellent controls on shape and orientation are achieved by adjusting the substrate orientation and growth parameters. Furthermore, micro-/nanoscale pits with controlled morphologies can a...