Multiplication of freestanding semiconductor membranes from a single wafer by advanced remote epitaxy

Abstract: Freestanding single-crystalline membranes are an important building block for functional electronics. Especially, compounds semiconductor membranes such as III-N and III-V offer great opportunities for optoelectronics, high-power electronics, and high-speed computing. Despite huge efforts to produce such membranes by detaching epitaxial layers from donor wafers, however, it is still challenging to harvest epitaxial layers using practical processes. Here, we demonstrate a method to grow and harvest multiple epitaxial membranes with extremely high throughput at the wafer scale. For this, 2D materials are directly formed on III-N and III-V substrates in epitaxy systems, which enables an advanced remote epitaxy scheme comprised of multiple alternating layers of 2D materials and epitaxial layers that can be formed by a single epitaxy run. Each epilayer in the multi-stack structure is then harvested by layer-by-layer peeling, producing multiple freestanding membranes with unprecedented throughput from a single wafer. Because 2D materials allow peeling at the interface without damaging the epilayer or the substrate, wafers can be reused for subsequent membrane production. Therefore, this work represents a meaningful step toward high-throughput and low-cost production of single-crystal membranes that can be heterointegrated.