PRESENTED BY

S.SRIKANTH REDDY Y.MARUTHI

III B.tech III.B.tech
Sri.prince087@gmail.com

St.JOHNS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

AND TECHNOLOGY,
YERRAKOTA,
YEMIGANUR,
KURNOOL (Dist),
ANDHRA PRADESH.
 ABSTRACT

VLSI fabrication augmented its aggrandizement for its insatiable demand

for higher operating speeds and device packing densities. The circuits fabricated

on bulk Si wafer could not satisfy these requirements. The present paper seeks to

ameliorate this area through Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology. It elucidates

a novel technology using atomic layer cleavage, which allows SOI processing to

be available for many substrate materials. It also presents various other fabrication

methods for SOI technology. Using the same transistor dimensions, SOI’s global

dielectric isolation enables IC manufacturers to pack more die on a wafer without

direct transistor scaling through reduction in the wafer area needed for the device

isolation. The SOI process exploits Nano cleaving, which reduces cost and creates

SOI wafers with exceptional material quality and high yield. Nano cleave is

highly efficient for chipmakers, relying on standard IC fabrication technologies.

This paper encompasses Nano cleave process fabrication steps in a lucid manner.

It also accrues major advantages of devices built on SOI wafers.

ABSTRACT
AABSTRACT
A
1. PREAMBLE
Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology provides opportunities to increase
transistor switching and at the same time to improve performance for low-power, battery-
driven electronics. With its ability to increase device density through reduction in
isolation area, SOI can postpone the need to shift to smaller scale transistors. SOI can
contribute to reduced manufacturing costs by simplifying IC fabrication processes,
through the elimi-nation of high-energy implantation for well doping and simplification
of device isolation. SOI also provides opportunities beyond conventional semiconductor
devices. SOI is a key method for fabricating “Silicon-on-Anything” devices, which have
the potential to integrate communications, smart cards, sensors and displays with
portable, low-power memory and logic devices, as in Figure 1.

Figure 1. SOI technology enables major performance advances in numerous applications

Using a fully-integrated, proprietary SOI manufacturing process, called

NanoCleave, advanced corporations have recently begun production of SOI wafers which
offers lower cost and higher wafer quality than earlier generations of SOI fabrication
methods.
2. SOI ADVANTAGES
The major advantage of devices built on SOI wafers are:
1) 20 to 30% higher operating speeds compared to similar devices on bulk Si
2). higher device packing density for logic and analog circuits and
3). greatly increased immunity to soft-error events generated by decay products of cosmic
ray showers.

Using the same transistor dimensions, SOI’s global dielectric isolation enables IC
manufacturers to pack more die on a wafer without direct transistor scaling, through
reduction in the wafer area needed for device isolation, as shown in Figure 2. This
increase in the die per wafer yield is especially valuable in logic and I/O-dominated
layouts such as in system-on-a-chip (SOC) devices. In addition to speed gains in
mainstream applications, the negligible current leakage and lower power requirements of
SOI-based chips can dramatically improve the performance of battery-powered
communication and computing devices for mobile electronics.
3. SOI: AN EMERGING MARKET FOR GIGAHERTZ-SPEED, LOW POWER
DEVICES
The need for lower cost IC devices which operate in the Gigahertz frequency
range used for mobile communications is driving the switch to SOI wafers. Broadband
communication networks, operating on battery or solar cell power, need the low-power,
small die size and global Isolation of SOI designs. The lower cost of Silicon device
processing on large area wafers provides a key advantage for SOI over communication
and computing devices fabricated with more exotic materials, such as GaAs.
Today’s standard processes fabricate transistors directly onto a bulk silicon wafer
surface. These transistors operate at relatively low switching speed because large
volumes of semiconductor material require more energy to turn on and off. For SOI-
based processes, transistors are built on a thin silicon surface layer isolated from the
wafer by a layer of oxide, and chips run 20% to 35% faster because less charge is needed
to switch the transistor state. This speed gain is equivalent to the advantage gained by a
full generation of device scaling on bulk-Silicon.

4. MAKING SOI A PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY

Despite its many benefits, SOI’s acceptance has been slowed by the high cost and
low production-maturity of first-generation SOI manufacturing methods. These various
methods were complex and often produced wafers of low or variable quality. Currently,
there are five methods to produce commercially available SOI, based on either direct
oxygen implantation or bonded layer transfer technologies, as shown in Table.
The two commercial ways to fabricate SOI wafers, namely, SIMOX (separation
by implantation of oxygen) and BESOI (bonded and etch-back) SOI, are quite
expensive because of the long implantation time for the SIMOX process and the need to
use two wafers to form a single SOI wafer in BESOI. Recently, a method called
SMART-CUT or ion cut was proposed by SOITEC, making use of wafer cleavage after
hydrogen implantation and subsequent wafer bonding. This technique is potentially
cheaper than the conventional BESOI process because one of the wafers can be recycled.
The materials cost of SOI can be further reduced if an alternative way can be found to
reduce the time required to implant a high enough dose of oxygen (SPIMOX) or
hydrogen (ion-cutting). Plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) is a burgeoning
technique offering many applications in materials and semiconductor processing. In PIII,
the sample is immersed in a plasma shroud from which ions are extracted and accelerated
through a high-voltage sheath into the target. The dose rate can be as high as ions cm s
which is equivalent to ten monolayers of implanted atoms per second and at least an
order of magnitude higher than that of a conventional ion implanter.

Since the entire wafer is implanted simultaneously, the implantation time is

independent of wafer size, thereby offering an extremely attractive approach for 300-mm
wafers. The use of PIII to synthesize SOI materials has been investigated, and the results
are very encouraging. In spite of the tremendous potential, the development of
commercial PIII instrumentation has not caught up. The newest of these technologies,
“NanoCleave”, represents a unique, second generation, approach that offers a
streamlined process flow and the potential for significantly lower SOI manufacturing
costs.
One of the earlier barriers to the use of SOI for mainstream chipmaking was the
higher cost of SOI wafers, up to 5 times the cost of bulk silicon wafers. With advanced
SOI fabrication technology, such as NanoCleave, the cost of SOI wafers can be
substantially reduced. It is expected that the price of 200 mm SOI wafers, which is
currently in the range of $500 per wafer, will drop by as much as 40% in the coming year
as production volumes and consumption of SOI wafers increase.

5. THE NANOCLEAVE PROCESS

SOI process uses NanoCleave and other novel manufacturing methods that
reduce cost and create SOI wafers with exceptional material quality and high yield.
Unlike most other competing technologies, the critical layer transfer and wafer bonding
steps are accomplished at room temperature. NanoCleave is highly efficient for
chipmakers, relying on standard IC fabrication technologies for most of the process steps,
supplemented with fully automated tools for the critical wafer bonding and separation
steps. Surface roughness of the finished SOI wafer exhibits RMS roughness below 1nm,
which is already within specification for use by most IC processes. As a measure of its
process simplicity, this is accomplished without the CMP and post-CMP damage removal
steps required in earlier generation bonded SOI wafer fabrication processes.

6. NANOCLEAVE PROCESS FABRICATION STEPS

SOI layer transfer techniques involve creating a dual-layer of device-silicon and an
insulator layer) (the Buried OXide or “BOX”) grown on a “donor” wafer and bonded to
a “handle” wafer. These silicon and buried oxide layers are then separated (‘cleaved’)
from the donor wafer, producing a finished SOI wafer. The NanoCleave process greatly
simplifies this layering sequence compared to earlier processes, resulting in the potential
for major cost reductions in SOI production, Figure 3.

FIGURE 3. THE NANO CLEAVE PROCESS FLOW

The NanoCleave process includes four main steps:

1. A “donor” wafer is formed by forming a high-quality silicon layer (which will
become the device layer in the final SOI wafer). A cleave plane situated beneath
this layer acts as a guide for the cleave front during the separation process. The
silicon layer does not contain the yield-limiting crystal defects and oxygen
 precipitates present in bulk silicon grown by CZ methods. A thermal oxide is
grown on the silicon layer that becomes part of the buried oxide layer in the
finished SOI wafer, Figure 4. The thermal oxide growth process produces a buried
oxide layer that is free of pinholes and silicon inclusions. The NanoCleave
silicon/oxide interface, Figure 5, has the low interface trap and fixed charge
densities that are required to control the signal frequency dependence of transistor
threshold voltage.

2. The NanoCleave process uses implantation in combination with other proprietary

process steps to promote low-energy cleaving along the desired wafer separation
plane. A standard beam line implanter is presently used for 200mm production in the
SiGen pilot line. However, looking ahead towards the needs of high-volume 200mm
and 300 mm SOI wafer production, the implant step can be more cost-effectively
performed by Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation (PIII) using tools, such as the
SiGen PIII implanter.
3. Plasma treatment of the wafer surfaces enables the donor wafer to be bonded to a bare
or oxidized “handle” wafer with a bond interface far stronger than the cleave plane.
Because the device silicon layer is separated by the buried oxide layer, a handle wafer
with considerably relaxed electrical and chemical specifications, and therefore lower
cost, can be used in this process.
4. Using Controlled Cleave Process (CCP), the donor and handle are separated at room
temperature. Using a controlled propagation along a single cleave front, as in Figure
6, this atomic layer cleaving process results in an as-cleaved surface roughness less
than 1nm (typically 2-5 Angstroms). This is an order of magnitude smoother than the
80 Angstroms of typical hydrogen-induced thermal cleaving, Figure 7. Such a smooth
surface is acceptable for many IC applications with no additional surface polishing.

Figure 7 AFM images of as-cleaved surfaces of NanoCleave and Hydrogen-

induced thermal separation methods
 The edge of the SOI layer has a smooth and regular character without the need for
edge polishing, Figure 8.

7. USING A STANDARD TOOL SET FOR SOI

The fabrication sequence has 20- 40% fewer steps than other bonded wafer SOI
fabrication methods and uses widely available IC fabrication tools, such as ion
implantation, thermal furnace and wet benches, for most of the process steps. The key
wafer bonding and atomic layer cleaving steps are done by fully-automated tools which
have been developed to be easily integrated into a high-volume SOI wafer fabrication
environment.
8. CONCLUSION
The advances in SOI wafer manufacturing technology are lowering the cost of SOI
wafers through a simpler, more cost-effective process flow. The NanoCleave process
accomplishes this productivity breakthrough by using conventional semiconductor
manufacturing tools for most of the process flow and by accomplishing the wafer
bonding and cleaving steps at room temperature. The as-cleaved SOI wafer surface is
smooth to sub-nanometer dimensions and can be used directly without any post-cleave
mechanical polishing or edge treatment.
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