Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) Wafer-Based Thin-Chip Fabrication

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is a wafer substrate technology with potential to fabricate ultra-thin silicon layers and thus ultra-thin chips. The high cost of SOI wafers and technical difficulties to derive ultra-thin chips from SOI substrates so far have hindered the industrial exploitation of SOI technology for thin chip manufacturing. This chapter provides an overview of the present and past SOI technologies, a discussion about the technical difficulties in thin-chip fabrication based on SOI, and a former industrial approach as a related example.