SMME is now extended as a potential fabrication technology for silicon on insulator (SOI) device structures. The basic challenge of SOI is the ability to fabricate a single-crystalline silicon thin film atop an insulating oxide film. SMM-SOI has already been shown to grow atop small patches of aluminum oxide (Fig. 3.6), however, the present goal is to extend the overgrown film to cover several microns.

First, a verification of proper oxide patterning and surface preparation is made. In this subsection, an optical microscope is used to provide a first-order judgement of prepared oxide patterns, followed by a more reliable verification by SEM. A few atomic force microscopy investigations were also conducted to verify surface smoothness of both the region between oxide patterns (i.e. seed areas), and the oxide surface. Either RIE or BOE etch methods have been used on individual samples as noted.

The first silicon wafer orientation to be investigated is Si(111) that has been shown to provide a cleaned surface by the appearance of $7\times 7$ surface reconstruction (section 5.1.1). The Si(100) wafer orientation is also investigated, despite the inability to reconstruct the Si(100) surface to $2\times 1$ as in the case of SMME (section 5.1.2).