BURIED OXIDES - WHERE WE HAVE BEEN AND WHERE WE ARE GOING

Buried oxides in semiconductors (so-called BOX) demonstrate a large flexibility of applications, not only in the domain of pure electronic circuits, but also in new areas such as integrated optoelectronics, micromachining and sensors. This is mainly due to the variety of dielectric properties that can play electrical as well as mechanical roles and can act as a buffer layer. Compound structures containing a buried insulator or buried oxide are most of the time identified as silicon-on-insulator (SOI), or more generally semiconductor-on-insulator instead of BOX. This paper briefly covers the roots of the concepts, and classifies and depicts the techniques used to investigate SOI as well as their main applications over the past 60 years.