Growth of thin silicon on sapphire film materials and device applications

The increasing emphasis of the submicron CMOS/SOS devices has placed a demand for high quality thin silicon on sapphire (SOS) films with the thickness of 100-200 nm. It was demonstrated that the crystalline quality of as-grown thin SOS films by chemical vapor deposition can be greatly improved with solid phase epitaxy process including self-implantation of silicon ions and thermal annealing. Subsequent regrowth of this amorphous layer leads to a great improvement in silicon layer crystallinity and channel carrier mobility as observed by double crystal X-ray diffraction and electrical measurement respectively. The films can be applied to the high-performance CMOS circuitry.