AVS 50th International Symposium
    Electronic Materials and Devices Wednesday Sessions
       Session EM-WeA

Paper EM-WeA5
Silicon on Diamond Technology

Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 3:20 pm, Room 321/322

Session: Diamond/Contacts to SiC
Presenter: A. Aleksov, North Carolina State University
Authors: A. Aleksov, North Carolina State University
N. Govindaraju, North Carolina State University
F. Okuzumi, North Carolina State University
G.N. Yushin, North Carolina State University
S.D. Wolter, Army Research Office / AMSRL- RO-PM
J.T. Prater, Army Research Office / AMSRL- RO-PM
Z. Sitar, North Carolina State University
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The roadmap for the development of Si-based high-speed low-power electronics for digital applications shows that Moore's law predicting an exponential increase in the speed operation of digital ICs will remain valid in the near future, yielding ever shrinking devices and larger integration scales, necessitates a decrease of the supply voltage to limit the loss power and an increase in the complexity of heat management. Silicon on Diamond (SOD) is proposed as an alternative to SOI to overcome the severe thermal limitations imposed by SOI, but at the same time retain the advantages of SOI in respect to increased device speed and carrier confinement. SOD technology is beneficial for both digital Si-applications as well as for high-power high-frequency Si-devices. This technology utilizes the unique physical properties of diamond i.e. the highest thermal conductivity (up to 22 W/cmK) and a high specific resistance (10@super 12@ Ωcm range). In our SOD approach, the insulating layer is a highly-oriented diamond (HOD) film with bulk-like properties, which can be grown on large area Si substrates. Following the diamond growth, another Si wafer is bonded to the diamond in UHV at a pressure of around 32 MPa and a temperature of 950°C. The bonded Si wafer is then thinned to the desired thickness. The bonded interface has been studied by TEM and EELS to assess structural and chemical character of the interface, respectively. Metal strip heater devices fabricated on SOD samples confirm the heat spreading efficiency of the diamond layer and benefits of SOD. For comparison, the same device structures have been fabricated on a SOI wafer. The experimental results are accompanied by finite element thermal simulations of the experimental set ups enabling the direct comparison of theoretical and experimental data.