Lateral zone growth and characterization of device quality silicon-on-insulator wafers

Abstract

A lateral zone melting process has been developed whereby (100) silicon-on-insulator wafers can be obtained. Small angle grain boundaries exist extensively in the recrystallized silicon, with a maximum variation in the orientation between adjacent grains of 0.3°. A SiC coating prevents the dusting of carbon from the moving heater from contaminating the silicon film. It has been found that enhanced arsenic diffusion along the small angle grain boundaries in this material is significantly less than that in the grain boundaries in laser-recrystallized silicon-on-insulator material. Furthermore, it was found that the small angle grain boundaries do not significantly affect the carrier mobility, probably because of the relatively low surface trapping state density at the small angle grain boundaries. Complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor devices fabricated in this material exhibit characteristics that are comparable to those of bulk devices.