Silicon-Carbide-on-Insulator via photoelectrochemical etching

Stanford researchers have improved upon a prior technology, S18-553 Silicon-Carbide-on-Insulator (SiCOI) Fabrication , to produce high quality, wafer-scale SiCOI. Current methods of producing SiCOI are unable to achieve the necessary uniformity at scale. Researchers in the Vuckovic group have developed a photochemical etching technique to overcome these issues. A less doped device layer is grown on a heavily doped sacrificial silicon carbide (SiC) layer before bonding to a handle wafer. The sacrificial layer is then mechanically ground down resulting in a small amount of grinding non-uniformity. A photochemical etch followed by chemical mechanical polishing results in high quality, wafer-scale SiCOI suitable for quantum and nonlinear photonic applications.

Stage of Research