Microcavity Engineering in Silicon for Integrated Circuit Application

By creating buried nanometer-scale microcavities underneath the silicon surface, one can alter the electrical, optical, and mechanical properties of silicon. This paper reviews recent developments and approaches of this microcavitiy engineering technique for silicon integrated circuit applications. Silicon-on-insulator substrates have been fabricated using high dose implantation for both the SIMOX and Ion-Cut approaches. Light-emitting porous silicon has also been demonstrated. Metallic impurity gettering is also proven feasible using buried layers of microcavities. We will also present novel proposals for 3-dimensional integration of active silicon device layers using the bond-and-cut technique.