Zone-melting-recrystallization silicon-on-insulator technology

Continuing reduction in feature size and increase in the number of components per chip have been basic trends in the evolution of Si integrated circuits (ICs). The minimum feature size in commercial VLSI chips is currently about 1 μm, and the number of components per chip is about one million. The years approaching 1990 will see the introduction of submicrometer feature sizes and multimillion-com-ponent chips. As device dimensions and device separations shrink below 1 μm, a new device isolation technique will be required to prevent parasitic coupling between adjacent devices through the Si substrate.