Fabrication of releasable single-crystal silicon-metal oxide field-effect devices and their deterministic assembly on foreign substrates

A new class of thin, releasable single-crystal silicon semiconductor device is presented that enables integration of high-performance electronics on nearly any type of substrate. Fully formed metal oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors with thermally grown gate oxides and integrated circuits constructed with them demonstrate the ideas in devices mounted on substrates ranging from flexible sheets of plastic, to plates of glass and pieces of aluminum foil. Systematic study of the electrical properties indicates field-effect mobilities of ≈710 cm² V^-1 s^-1, subthreshold slopes of less than 0.2 V decade^-1 and minimal hysteresis, all with little to no dependence on the properties of the substrate due to bottom silicon surfaces that are passivated with thermal oxide. The schemes reported here require only interconnect metallization to be performed on the final device substrate, which thereby minimizes the need for any specialized processing technology, with important consequences in large-area electronics for display systems, flexible/stretchable electronics, or other non-wafer-based devices.