The integration on silicon of direct band gap materials such as some semiconductors from the III-V group is of a rising interest for tomorrow's optoelectronic devices. Although silicon is the raw material for many microelectronic devices, it has a poor light emitting efficiency due to his indirect band gap. Among the III-V family, the In(Ga)As compounds present the advantage of a smaller band gap than silicon, which encourage the confinement of electron-hole pairs. However, the large lattice mismatch between silicon and In(Ga)As is a serious limitation for the epitaxial integration. This PhD work has been focused on the ion beam study of In(Ga)As quantum dots (QDs) grown by epitaxy on silicon and of the QD capping by silicon. Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) has been used to quantify composition of both QDs and cap layer. Exo-diffusion and excess issues of some elements have been pointed out. The epitaxial relation between QDs and substrate have been investigated by ion channelling (RBS-C). Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS) has also been used to obtain high resolution profiles of composition, defects and strain for both the QD plane and the capping layer. Direct space mapping of both crystals has also been achieved by MEIS thanks to the blocking effect.
