The impacts of localized backside etching on proton radiation response in SOI passive devices

Abstract In this work, the effect of high-energy proton irradiation on the radiofrequency (RF) properties of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates is investigated. The localized backside etching (LBE) structure is introduced for RF properties improvement and proton irradiation hardening. It is observed that after the 50 MeV proton irradiation with a fluence of 1 × 10 12 p cm −2 , the attenuation, crosstalk, and relative permittivity significantly decrease for conventional SOI substrates. In contrast, LBE substrates are less sensitive to proton irradiation and simultaneously exhibit better RF performance. The enhancement of the LBE structure on irradiation tolerance is qualitatively characterized by the equivalent circuit model parameter extraction.