Measurement of Viscoelastic Stress Relief in Patterned Silicon-on-Insulator Composite Structures With Raman Spectroscopy

Abstract

ABSTRACTRaman spectroscopy has been utilized to measure room-temperature residual strain in the active device layer of laser-recrystallized silicon-on-insulator (SOI) composite structures. The SOI composite structures were fabricated on synthetic fused-silica substrates, and the composites contained a phosphosilicate glass (PSG) layer to provide high-temperature stress relief. Conventional masking and etching techniques were used to selectively pattern the polycrys-talline silicon layer into isolated square islands prior to recrystallization. The biaxial in-plane stress in recrystallized films was calculated from the measured strain-induced first-order Stokes Raman wavenumber shifts, and the results indicate that 200- μm-square recrystallized silicon islands have significantly lower in-plane stress values than continuous recrystallized silicon films. These measurements provide a preliminary confirmation of the dependence of the time constant for viscoelastic stress relief on the in-plane pattern dimension.