The dependence of electron mobility on strain, channel direction, and substrate orientation is theoretically studied for the germanium n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. For the unstrained channel, (111) substrate can provide the highest mobility among the three orientations, mainly due to its largest quantization mass and smallest conductivity mass in L valley. The tensile strain parallel to the [(1) over bar 10] channel direction on (111) substrate gives 4.1 times mobility of Si at 1 MV/cm, and the mobility enhancement starts to saturate for the strain larger than 0.5%. The compressive strain of similar to 1.5% transverse to [(1) over bar 10] on (111) substrate yields 2.9 times mobility enhancement at 1 MV/cm. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics

Raman shifts are investigated on silicon and germanium substrates under the uniaxial tensile strain on various substrate orientations. The strain splits the triply degenerate optical (LO, TO) phonons at the zone center (k approximate to 0). The redshifts of Si Raman peaks induced by the tensile strain on all substrate orientations are observed. With the specific polarization of the incident light, however, the unusual blueshifts of Ge Raman peaks induced by the tensile strain are observed on (110) and (111) Ge substrates. By using the suitable phenomenological constants and taking the Raman selection rules into consideration, the experimental results are in reasonable agreement with the lattice dynamical theory

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