Characterization of Structural Quality of Bonded Silicon-On-Insulator Wafers by Spectroscopic Ellipsometry and Raman Spectroscopy

ABSTRACTThe crystalline quality of bonded Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) wafers were examined by spectroscopic ellipsometry and Raman spectroscopy. Both techniques detect slight structural defects in the SOI layer. If a pure crystalline silicon dielectric function is assumed for the SOI layer, the spectroscopic ellipsometry data fitting yields an unacceptably large discrepancy between the experimental and modeled data. The best fits for all the samples result in a dielectric function of the SOI layer that consists of a physical mixture of crystalline silicon and about 4 % to 7 % of amorphous silicon. Using such a mixture indicates that there are still some defects in the SOI layer when compared with the high-quality bulk crystalline silicon. This observation is further supported by Raman spectroscopy measurements. The Raman spectra of all SOI samples exhibit a feature at about 495 cm−1 that is not observed in the crystalline silicon spectrum. Features similar to the 495 cm−1 feature have been reported in the literature and attributed to dislocations or faults in the silicon lattice.