Vertical and lateral heterogeneous integration

The wafer-scale integration of advanced optical, electrical, and micromechanical semiconductor devices on a single chip requires techniques for combining differing semiconductor structures in the plane of the wafer. We have developed a technique for achieving large-scale monolithic integration of lattice-mismatched materials in the vertical direction and the lateral integration of dissimilar lattice-matched structures. The technique uses a single nonplanar wafer-bonding step to transform epitaxial structures into lateral epitaxial variation across the surface of a wafer.