The goal of the proposed research is to demonstrate epitaxial growth, by laser ablation in a UHV vacuum system of high quality, insulating oxide films onto heated single crystal silicon substrates, followed by CVD epitaxial growth of silicon onto the insulating oxide. Based on recent reports of successful epitaxial growth of MgO on silicon and gallium arsenide, CeO2 on silicon, and PrO2 on silicon, we propose to focus on MgO, CeO2, and PrO2 as the candidate epitaxial insulating layers. Although a successful process would open up many applications, the goal for this work is to enable a silicon-on-insulator structure in which the insulator is grown epitaxially. Alternatively, the epitaxial oxide film may provide a highly selective etch stop for a bond-and-etch-back silicon-on-insulator process.
