Investigating the physical mechanism of ion-slicing in AlN and hetero-integrating AlN thin film on Si(100) substrate

Heterogeneously integrating the monocrystal AlN thin films on Si(100) substrates by ion-slicing technique provides a promising high-quality material platform to achieve the monolithic integration of Silicon-based CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) and high-performance III-nitride devices. Single crystalline AlN bulk materials implanted by hydrogen ions (H+) were used to elucidate the physical mechanism of the blistering formation in hydrogen implanted AlN with different annealing process. XTEM characterization was performed to reveal the formation of H-induced microcracks which eventually leads to the layer splitting. Using the ion-slicing technique, the AlN thin films were capitally transferred to Si(100) substrate. The crystal quality and the microstructure of the transferred AlN thin film were characterized thoroughly, indicating its exceptional crystal quality with the full width at half maximum (FWHM) for (002) XRC as low as 93.6 arcsec.