Selective epitaxial growth of silicon and some potential applications

In the selective epitaxial growth (SEG) of silicon, growth occurs only on exposed silicon areas of a silicon substrate. Substrate regions on which silicon growth is not desired are masked by a dielectric film, typically silicon dioxide or silicon nitride. Use of the process permits the fabrication of novel silicon devices and integrated-circuit structures. In this paper, an overview is presented of our studies on the SEG process at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Aspects covered are the kinetics of the process using a SiCl
4
and H
2
gaseous mixture, the associated suppression of deposition on silicon dioxide and silicon nitride, and some potential applications of the process to the fabrication of bipolar devices and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cells.