XTEM analysis of buried layer structure of silicon-on-insulator materials

Abstract

It Is well known that a buried silicon nitride or silicon oxide layer in silicon can be formed by high dose >150 KeV nitrogen or oxygen implantation into single crystal silicon followed by high temperature annealing. This is one of the techniques to produce silicon-on-insulator (SOI) structures which is promising for a variety of potential application in VLSI, high-voltage devices, high density CMOS circuits and possibly 3-dimensional integration, etc. The main concern is how to produce a buried dielective layer with good insulating properties and with a high quality single crystal silicon overlayer on it.In this paper the microstructures of buriea silicon nitride and silicon oxide layer of the SOI materials formed by N+ or O+ implantation in single-crystal silicon are studied oy means of cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) and infrared (IR) absorption measurements.