Deposition of epitaxial yttria-stabilized zirconia on single-crystal si and subsequent growth of an amorphous sio₂interlayer

A processing technique is developed to fabricate single-crystal yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) on amorphous SiO₂on (100) single-crystal Si. The YSZ layer shows high crystallinity with an ion beam channelling minimum of 11% from Rutherford backscattering. Even though there is a thick intervening amorphous SiO₂layer between the Si and the YSZ, the single-crystal YSZ layer is aligned with the crystal Si. The tilt and rotation variations are 0.64º and 10.11º respectively, based on X-ray diffraction O-rocking curves on [100] and p scans on [202] of YSZ films. The epitaxial nature of the YSZ on the thick SiO₂layer (from 10 to 100 nm) is further confirmed by high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy analysis. This processing and the resulting multilayer structure might provide a new option for fabricating innovative microelectronic devices.