Splitting of frequencies of optical phonons in tensile-strained germanium layers

Tensile-strained germanium films in Ge/GeSn/Si/GeSnSi multilayer heterostructures grown by molecularbeam epitaxy on Si(001) substrates are investigated by Raman spectroscopy. Biaxial tensile strains in the films reach 1.5%, which exceeds values previously obtained for this system. Splitting of frequencies of long-wavelength optical phonons is experimentally observed; i.e., the shift of the frequency of the singlet induced by biaxial tensile strains is larger than the shift of the frequency of the doublet in agreement with calculations. The strain-induced shift of Raman scattering peaks from two-phonon scattering in germanium is also detected.