US Patent 7732866 Grounding front-end-of-line structures on a SOI substrate

Structures and a method are disclosed for grounding gate-stack and/or silicon active region front-end-of-line structures on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, which may be used as test structures for VC inspection. In one embodiment, a structure includes a grounded bulk silicon substrate having the SOI substrate thereover, the SOI substrate including a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) layer and a buried oxide (BOX) layer; the silicon active region having at least one finger element within the SOI layer, the at least one finger element isolated by a shallow trench isolation (STI) layer; and a polysilicon ground intersecting the at least one finger element and extending through the STI layer and the BOX layer to the grounded bulk silicon substrate, the polysilicon ground contacting the silicon active region and the grounded bulk silicon substrate.