SOI (Silicon-on-insulator) - materials and devices

The flexibility provided by full isolation of the SOI substrates and almost ideal properties of the SOI MOSFET have made SOI ICs very attractive for a number of applications. Although high prices of the SOI materials, SOI has potential to become a production-worthy technology, especially for very high-speed ULSI CMOS, low power supply devices, DRAMs and smart power devices due to process simplicity, easier scaling and increased packing density. In this paper the SOI substrates fabrication methods as well as some SOI devices and their applications are reviewed.