Improvement of total-dose irradiation hardness of silicon-on-insulator materials by modifying the buried oxide layer with ion implantation

The hardening of the buried oxide (BOX) layer of separation by implanted oxygen (SIMOX) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers against total-dose irradiation was investigated by implanting ions into the BOX layers. The tolerance to total-dose irradiation of the BOX layers was characterized by the comparison of the transfer characteristics of SOI NMOS transistors before and after irradiation to a total dose of 2.7 Mrad(SiO₂). The experimental results show that the implantation of silicon ions into the BOX layer can improve the tolerance of the BOX layers to total-dose irradiation. The investigation of the mechanism of the improvement suggests that the deep electron traps introduced by silicon implantation play an important role in the remarkable improvement in radiation hardness of SIMOX SOI wafers.