Patent ID: 7514341

Claim:
A process for the formation of a structure comprising a thin layer of semiconductor material on a substrate, which comprises: providing a zone of weakness in a donor substrate; bonding the donor substrate to a support substrate; detaching a portion of the donor substrate to transfer it to the support substrate, wherein the detaching comprises applying heat treating the donor substrate to weaken the zone of weakness without initiating detachment and applying an energy pulse to provoke self-maintained detachment of the donor substrate portion to transfer it to the support substrate; and subjecting the transferred portion of the donor substrate to a finishing operation to form a thin layer, wherein the finishing operation is simplified by having less steps compared to that which is conducted by a conventional process that achieves detaching by applying a heat treatment to provoke self-maintained detachment of the donor substrate portion and that forms the thin layer by a conventional finishing operation; wherein the simplified finishing operation is a sequence that is simplified by eliminating a first or last step of a conventional finishing operation that consists of repeating at least once a sequence of smoothing and thinning steps of either (a) a smoothing operation conducted on the free surface of the transferred portion of the donor substrate followed by a thinning operation conducted on the free surface of the transferred portion of the donor substrate, or (b) the thinning operation followed by the smoothing operation, and wherein the thin layer has a surface of the same smoothness as one prepared by the finishing operation of the conventional process.