Characteristics of submicrometer MOS transistors on SOI films have been studied. The SOI films were formed by implantation of a buried oxide layer followed by epitaxial growth of additional silicon. MOS transistors were fabricated using a process compatible with a submicrometer bulk CMOS process. The final SOI thicknesses were designed to be 220 and 520 nm after device Fabrication; the thickness of the implanted buried oxide was 400 nm. Satisfactory characteristics were obtained for CMOS transistors as short as 0.6 µm. In addition, abnormal impurity diffusion did not occur in these implanted-buried-oxide SOI films. Small -geometry effects, such as threshold-voltage shift, were less severe in the thin SOI films than in bulk wafers. In this paper we discuss submicrometer CMOS characteristics in thin SOI films and show that this technology offers significant potential for submicrometer CMOS in addition to the other advantages of SOI technology.