Characterization of bonded silicon-on-aluminum-nitride wafers with RBS, TEM and HRXRD techniques

Bonded silicon-on-insulator (SOI) materials via the Smart-cutTM (or ion-cut) process attract increasing interests due to their great capability and versatility in fabricating novel virtual substrates. Previously we reported the successful fabrication of silicon-on-aluminum-nitride (SOAN) structure with smart-cut process [C.L. Men, Z. Xu, Z. An, X.Y. Xie, M. Zhang, C.L. Lin, Physica B 324 (2002) 229]. In this work, we characterize the bonded SOAN structure with Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) together with Kikuchi line diffraction patterns, and high resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) techniques. It is found that, after smart-cut process, the top Si layer preserves a rather good single crystalline quality, while strain is induced in top Si and can be altered in the annealing step. The rotational misalignment during bonding step can be evaluated by Kikuchi line patterns. Our discussions here may be common for all bonded virtual substrates via smart-cut technology.