Hydrogen Implants for Layer Exfoliation

Researchers at Corning Incorporated have developed a process whereby single crystal silicon thin films are transferred onto a flat panel display glass substrate using hydrogen ion implantation. The energy of the implant controls the effective exfoliation thickness, agreeing well with SRIM calculations, while the hydrogen ion dose controls the size of the platelets formed. The ion dose was found to influence the final void defect count in exfoliated films. Finally, the ion beam and ion implant end‐station cooling characteristics were investigated. These parameters control the effective implant heat load generated during ion beam processing. The temperature at which exfoliation occurs during an exfoliation heat cycle was found to be inversely proportional to the hydrogen ion dose when the temperature during ion implantation is <100 °C. The most sensitive exfoliation temperature to ion dose dependence was observed for cooler implants, i.e. <35 °C. Data indicates that at the minimum exfoliation dose the exfoliation temperature is reduced significantly by increasing the implant heat generated during ion beam processing. Higher hydrogen doses than the minimum required for exfoliation exhibit only a small exfoliation temperature variation with ion dose. By optimizing the implant heat load generated during ion beam processing it is observed that the efficiency of the exfoliation process is also enhanced. Implant temperatures of 150 to 160 °C were found to further reduce the minimum implant dose required for exfoliation by an additional 5%, as verified by calorimetric measurements. These results enable us to further conclude that hydrogen out‐diffusion is not significant in this process.