2. Key benefits

In an SOI circuit, each transistor occupies an individual silicon island, dielectrically isolated from the silicon substrate (figure 1 b). The lateral isolation of the islands makes it possible to design more compact architectures than in bulk silicon, as isolation boxes or trenches become superfluous. As for vertical isolation, guaranteed by the buried oxide, it eliminates the disadvantages of a solid substrate: interference mechanisms between neighboring devices (in particular, the latch-up effect), leakage currents, etc.

The source and drain regions extend all the...