Plasma-activated bonding, controlled cleave process, and non-contact smoothing for Germanium-on-Insulator (GeOI) manufacturing

Transistor scaling limitations require profound changes in materials systems used to manufacture future generations of integrated circuits. Germanium-on-Insulator (GeOI) substrates have been proposed as one method to overcome the limitations of silicon and silicon on insulator substrates (SOI). GeOI substrates offer the advantages of the high electron and hole mobilities while at least partially overcoming the high leakage currents inherent to the small band gap of germanium. In addition, GeOI has been found to be compatible with high k gate dielectrics, GeOI is now joining silicon-based materials, including SOI, strained silicon (s-Si), strained silicon on SiGe on insulator (SGOI), or strained silicon on insulator s-SOI as potential next-generation engineered substrates.