SOI Future or Flop?

By SemiWiki

February 3, 2014

Silicon On Insulator (SOI) is a technology that has been in use by the semiconductor industry for a long time. Early technologies such as Silicon On Sapphire (SOS) were reported as early as the sixties. In the eighties technologies such as V groove dielectric isolation were used. In the nineties we saw wafer bonding become the most prevalent technique for SOI fabrication, although implanted oxygen was also in use. It wasn't until the late nineties that IBM ushered in the modern era of SOI usage for high performance CMOS.

SOI has always offered certain performance advantages with radiation hardness, the ability to isolate both positive and negative voltages on the same substrate and reduced power consumption being a few key examples. Although this article is focused on state-of-the-art CMOS, SOI is also an important part of many emerging Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) applications and some power IC applications as well. The issue with SOI has always been cost and it has always been a niche technology.

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