It is a colourless, volatile liquid that is used in MOVPE (Metalorganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy) as an alternative to germane.

325-350 °C).,[1] coupled with advantages of low carbon incorporation and reduced main group elemental impurities in epitaxially grown germanium comprising layers such as Ge, SiGe, SiGeC, strained silicon, GeSb, and GeSbTe.

Rohm and Haas (now part of The Dow Chemical Company), IMEM, and CNRS have developed a process to grow germanium films on germanium at low temperatures in a Metalorganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE) reactor using isobutylgermane.

[4][5] The low growth temperature of 350 °C achievable with this new precursor has eliminated the memory effect of germanium in III-V materials.

Recently IBGe is used to deposit Ge epitaxial films on a Si or Ge substrate Archived 2011-07-10 at the Wayback Machine, followed by the MOVPE deposition of InGaP and InGaAs layers with no memory effect, to enable triple-junction solar cells and integration of III-V compounds with silicon and germanium.