Evaluation of InP-to-silicon heterobonding

In this paper, we evaluate hydrophilic (HP) and hydrophobic (HB) surface pre-treatments in InP-to-Si direct wafer bonding. Surface roughness and surface chemistry was examined using atomic force microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, respectively. After bonding, the bonded interfaces were evaluated using infrared transmission imaging, bond-strength and current–voltage (I–V) measurements. It was found that HP surface treatment using oxygen plasma makes room temperature bonding of InP and Si very spontaneous, and results in high bond-strengths already after low-temperature annealing. This was not observed when using standard oxidising acids as HP surface treatment before bonding. HB InP and Si surfaces, also, did not prove to bond spontaneously at room temperature and the bond-strength started to increase only after annealing at about 400°C. HB bonding and annealing at 400°C was though the best choice regarding the electrical characteristics of the bonded InP/Si heterojunction.