Recent advances in solid-phase epitaxial recrystallization of SOS with applications to CMOS and bipolar devices

Recent advances in solid-phase epitaxial recrystallization suggest that this technology may dramatically improve the crystallinity of heteroepitaxial silicon-on-insulators, such as silicon-on-sapphire (SOS). Recent improvements of 0.3- and 0.5-μm SOS films using two solid-phase epitaxial recrystallization processes (SPEAR and DSPE) are reported. Both techniques have reduced the total microtwin densities of SOS samples by more than 100-fold, while increasing electron and hole mobilities approximately 50%. The resulting properties are very close to those of bulk silicon. High-performance submicrometer CMOS devices and circuits in 0.3-μm recrystallized SOS films have been fabricated.