SBIR-STTR Award

A program is proposed to investigate and develop thin buried oxide (BOX) SIMOX with quality of silicon and BOX layers suitable to support fully depleted SOI applications with minimum feature size at and below 0.18 um. In Phase I, novel, low dose SIMOX processes in low energy (less than 100keV) regime will be examined. This approach will allow to tailor thin film layer thicknesses by proper choice of implant parameters, employment of the Ibis 1000 implanter with independent temperature and beam current control will allow to achieve low dislocation density silicon layer, and extreme anneal conditions will be used to achieve the best characteristics of silicon and BOX layers. The thrust of the proposed work is to develop the new generation of low cost, high quality SIMOX with improved reproducibility and reliability for advanced commercial and rad hard microelectronics.

In follow-on to the Phase I work on the "Low D-Dose Low Energy SIMOX for Fully-Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI)" a program is proposed to investigate further the formation of ultra-thin film SIMOX in low-dose low-energy regime. In Phase I, the continuous 50 nm buried oxide SIMOX was achieved with the oxygen dose approximately 2 times lower than required in high-energy low-dose SIMOX. The promising results of the Phase I efforts encourage to pursue the investigations and developments of manufacturable and cost effective low-dose SIMOX substrate by implantation at 65 keV in the high current Ibis 1000 implanter.