A sheet of spherical, well-separated, crystalline Ge nanodots embedded in SiO ₂ on top of a p-(001) Si wafer was fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) combined with rapid thermal processing and characterized structurally and electrically. The average size of the Ge nanodots was estimated to be 4.5 nm with an average aerial density of 3×10¹¹  cm ^-2, situated at 4.4 nm in average away from the Si/SiO ₂ interface. Significant charge storage effects were observed through capacitance–voltage measurements of metal–oxide–semiconductor capacitors. © 2003 American Institute of Physics.