He-implantation and annealing is an alternative method of fabricating strain-relaxed SiGe buffer layers for applications such as strained Si MOSFETs. Here we report the characteristics of He-implanted and annealed SiGe buffer layers and the properties of n-channel MOSFETs fabricated with them. We find that the electron mobility is comparable to the value obtained from devices fabricated with graded SiGe buffer layers. The drive current is 1.8 times larger than that in bulk Si control devices and short channel MOSFETs have a low current at negative gate voltage. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.