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To: clyde dunn who wrote (67870)	11/4/1998 8:32:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 186894

Clyde - Re: Simox I assume you are referring to the process whereby a thin SiO2 layer is formed slightly below the surface of the bulk silicon wafer by high dose/low current Oxygen implantation and annealing. The concept is good. the thin oxide layer reduces the junction capacitance of the Source and Drain regions and this reduction will help speed up circuits, all other things being equal. The bit about soft error reduction is another side benefit. Alpha particles entering the silicon will create a shower of electron-hole pairs and due to the alpha particle trajectory, most of these would eb created BELOW the insulating SiO2 layer and not be swept into storage capacitors a la DRAMs or junction nodes a la SRAM. (Very shallow trajectory alpha particles will not be shielded, however.) The problems occur in the implementation. High dose oxygen implants can create all sorts of defects but IBM claims that the low dose rates - I think ONE WAFER PER HOUR PLUS LONG anneal times! - can produce near-defect free films. This then is an expensive trade off - and a big cost adder. But IF the process works as advertised, the speed benefits could be very real. Paul