Current status and future perspectives of wafer bonding (Smart Cut™) SOI technology

Current status and future perspectives for SOI (silicon-on-insulator) using Smart Cut technology will be reviewed. First, industrial growth of SOI production mainly driven by MRJ and low-power LSI applications will be presented, with a focus on the rapid growth of 300mm SOI wafer production and advancement of Si thickness control. Next, versatility of the bonding (Smart Cut) technology will be described, exemplified by the future device candidates, such as strained-Si on insulator, ultrathin FD structures, FinFET, combination of different crystal orientations, and Ge-on-insulator. Thirdly, it will be shown that bonding technology can be extended to realize totally different functions, such as SO (silicon-on-quartz) and combination of Si technology with compound semiconductors, which cannot be realized by conventional bulk Si nor bulk compound semiconductors. Throughout this presentation, it will be shown that wafer bonding technology provides not only solutions for survival of CMOS scaling, but also contributes to diversification of functionality in LSIs, which will meet the needs of the future IT society.