The History of Silicon-on-Sapphire

Silicon-on-Sapphire (SOS) is one of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) semiconductor manufacturing technologies. In fact, SOS is the first of the SOI technologies. SOS is formed by depositing a thin layer of silicon on to a sapphire wafer at high temperature. Its main advantage for electronic circuits is the highly insulating substrate. The benefit of the insulating substrate is very low parasitic capacitance, which provides increased speed, lower power consumption, better linearity, and more isolation than bulk silicon.