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From the viewpoint of electric device fabrication, we examined a SIMOX 3D sculpting method (Koonath, 2003) that three dimensionally integrate electric circuits and photonic circuits on an SOI substrate. We investigated buried optical waveguide structure underneath the silicon surface and defect characteristics on the surface of the substrate made by 8" size SIMOX 3D sculpting. As a result, we showed that balancing between no defects on the silicon surface and a formation of buried waveguide is achievable when the BOX by SIMOX 3D sculpting is continuous

A novel approach to three-dimensionally (3-D) integrate nanophotonic and electronic devices in silicon is described. The method is based on the SIMOX (Separation by Implantation of OXygen) process, to realize three-dimensionally (3-D) integrated devices in a monolithic fashion. In this approach, photonic and electronic devices are realized on vertically stacked layers of silicon, separated from each other by a dielectric layer of silicon dioxide formed through the process of oxygen implantation. Opto-electronic integration is demonstrated by realizing photonic circuits in a subterranean silicon layer and Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) transistors on a surface layer of silicon. Optical and electronic functionalities are thus separated into two different layers of silicon, paving the way towards dense three-dimensional opto-electronic integration. This has the significant advantage that photonic devices do not consume any of the expensive silicon real estate required for CMOS circuitry. The versatility of the technique of SIMOX 3-D sculpting in obtaining complex optical circuitry is also demonstrated by synthesizing a cascaded microdisk structure that may be utilized to tailor the passband characteristics of optical filters.

In this paper, fabrication of three dimensionally integrated nano-optical structures in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates using the process of separation by implantation of oxygen (SIMOX) is reported. Buried rib waveguides with lowest ever loss with the SIMOX process, reported with the fabrication of vertically integrated structures using conventional lithography and etching process, demonstrate the capability to sculpt 3-D integrated optical devices.

We demonstrated near-field recording with the combination of a GaN laser diode and a 1.5 NA objective lens. The realized linear bit density was less than 90 nm (corresponding to the areal recording density over 40 Gbit/in/sup 2/) regardless of using a small 1.0 mm-diameter super-hemispherical solid immersion lens (SIL). Further improvement of a near-field phase-change optical disk will enable a linear bit density of 80 nm or less. In this talk we shall also report the fabrication process of the plateau, and of the electrode on the SIL.

With a view to application to electric-device fabrication, the authors investigated a separation-by-implanted-oxygen (SIMOX) three-dimensional (3D) sculpting method [P. Koonath et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 83, 4909 (2003)] that will integrate in three dimensions electric circuits and photonic circuits on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The authors analyzed the defects in the first silicon layer for electric circuits and the second silicon layer for optical circuits made by SIMOX 3D sculpting. The authors found that a balance between an acceptable number of defects on the first silicon layer and the formation of a buried optical waveguide is achievable. The defect densities of the first silicon layer and the second silicon layer were 1.8×103∕cm2 and 5.0×107∕cm2, respectively.