Crystalline properties and strain relaxation mechanism of CVD grown GeSn

Ge1-xSnx alloys are new intriguing materials, heralding a major impact on future-generation microelectronic and photonic applications due to a sizable improvement of the charge transport properties [1]. In order to gain valuable insights on the fundamentals and the tailoring of the material properties, it is indispensable to apply robust techniques to accurately assess (i) the alloy composition x and (ii) its influence on the GeSn relaxed cubic lattice constant a0GeSn. Stoichiometric data would be assessable via x-ray diffraction if Vegard’s law:)1()1 ( 000 1 xxbxaxaa GeSnSnGeSnGe x