Patent ID: 7371596

Claim:
A method for fabricating an integrated-circuit monolith that is substantially monocrystalline and having parts that are substantially lattice-matched, said monolith being three-dimensional in the sense that it comprises two or more layers of circuitry, said method combining at least the following technologies: a) sputter deposition or molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) of a type-1 semiconductor material by using a type-1 semiconductor target; b) sputter deposition or MBE of a small amount of heavily doped type-2 semiconductor material by using a type-2 semiconductor target; c) diffusion in selected areas of the type-2 impurity by using an energetic beam source to emit an energetic collimated beam operable to locally heat an illuminated region of a surface, and a parallel-beam scanner, wherein the parallel beam scanner comprises: two optical devices, each comprising: a first reflective optical element, operable to rotate around a first respective axis; a second reflective optical element, operable to rotate around a second respective axis, wherein the first respective axis and the second respective axis are parallel; and at least one actuator coupled to the first and second reflective optical elements, and operable to respectively rotate the first and second reflective optical elements around the first and second respective axes in a coordinated manner such that the first and second reflective optical elements are parallel, wherein the optical device is operable to perform a parallel displacement of the beam in a respective direction, and wherein the respective direction is orthogonal to the beam; wherein the two optical devices comprises a first optical device and a second optical device, wherein the first optical device is operable to: receive the beam from the beam source; displace the beam in a first direction; and transmit the displaced beam to the second optical device; wherein the second optical device is operable to: receive the displaced beam from the first optical device; displace the beam in a second direction; and transmit the displaced beam to the surface; wherein the second direction is orthogonal to the first direction; and wherein the two optical devices are operable to direct the beam to illuminate and locally heat a sequence of specified regions of the surface to pattern the surface, thereby performing said diffusion in the selected areas of the type-2 impurity; d) removal of type-2 impurity from nonselected areas by ion milling or reactive ion etching (RIE); and e) rapid annealing by using general (unpatterned) incident light.