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The discrete IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) is the most important power semiconductor device for power conversion and control in the medium power range with voltages >400 V. Next generation IGBTs require low thermal budget p-n junction formation for the back side field stop and emitter layer. The requirement for the limited thermal budget is due to the fact that the front side metallization...
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Laser annealing can be used for applications that require confinement of heat on the top surface in order to preserve the integrity of buried structures. To confine heat near the silicon surface, the most appropriate tool is UV laser. Here, two excimer lasers with different characteristics were used to anneal boron in silicon. The first one has pulse duration of about 180 ns and the second one of...
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In this work concerted experiments and theoretical analysis are applied to conclusively demonstrate the vacancy generation during fast melting and re-growth of Si by laser irradiation. Experiments, based on the positron annihilation spectroscopy and designed to test the theoretical predictions, evidence a vacancy super-saturation after the laser process The dependence on the pulse energy and number...
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The application of lasers for annealing of wafer-based and thin-film microelectronic devices is steadily increasing. Excellent control of material characteristics (for example, dopant activation profile) can be achieved through proper selection of laser parameters, such as wavelength, pulse duration and fluence, which directly influence the laser material interaction. In this paper, we present several...
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The interaction between sub-melt laser annealing and an embedded Si1-xGex source/drain (S/D) module has been studied in more detail by means of a PFET transistor evaluation and blanket layer characterization. If the integration of the Si1-xGex source/drain and laser anneal modules is not optimized, defects are introduced into the Si substrate as a result of the additional thermal stress. The presence...
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We report, for the first time, a detailed study of the 100 mum-scaled emissivity and temperature variation in millisecond annealing (MSA) depending on the Si trench structure, the shallow trench isolation (STI) structure, and transistor structure measured by Thermawave method. Flash lamp annealing (FLA) was applied as MSA technique. In case of Si trench structure with varying the trench depth, the...
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In this work we present a new low-temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) TFTs fabrication process, based on excimer laser annealing, on polyimide (PI) substrate. The PI is spun on Si-wafer, used as rigid carrier, thus overcoming difficulties in handling flexible freestanding plastic substrates, eliminating the problem of plastic shrinkage with high temperature processing and allowing the use of standard...
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There is a clear and increasing interest in short time annealing processing far below one second, i.e. the lower limit of Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) called spike annealing. This was driven by the need of suppressing the so-called Transient Enhanced Diffusion in advanced boron-implanted shallow pn-junctions in silicon technology. Meanwhile the interest in flash lamp annealing (FLA) in the millisecond...
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Double-pulsed high-power excimer laser annealing is investigated for use as a means of implanted dopant activation. The laser setup incorporates two lasers that allow double pulse laser annealing with pulse offsets much smaller than the repetition of the individual XeCl excimer lasers. In this configuration, the pulse offset can be fine tuned. Sheet resistances are measured and thermal simulations...
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This paper presents the integration of a sub-melt laser annealing technique in a 45 nm CMOS technology platform. To enhance the activation of transistors gates and source/drain junctions, ms anneal as dynamic surface anneal (DSA) is added to conventional low temperature spike process. The aim of this new integration scheme is to significantly increase the solubility limit of the dopants without appreciable...
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Light scattering from rough surfaces is an area of research that has received a great deal of interest from several engineering disciplines. Analytical models for reflectivity have been useful in the study of medical imaging, atomic physics, remote sensing and rapid thermal processing (RTP) of silicon semiconductor wafers. This paper presents a new variation of the surface generation method (SGM)...
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Scaling of source/drain extension junctions continues to be a major focus for sub 45 nm planar CMOS process development. Device scalability, drive current, and leakage performance are determined by junction depth, activation, and residual disorder. These requirements have driven ion implants into the deep sub-keV regime and integration of millisecond anneals for activation. In this paper, we introduce...
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Sub-melt millisecond annealing technologies have been widely accepted for current and future IC fabrication. Real-time temperature control, both within wafer and from wafer-to-wafer, is one of the key challenges that must be addressed for the successful introduction of any millisecond annealing technology into a production environment. In this paper, we show results from a novel pyrometry approach...
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Ultra-thin silicon oxide (SiO2) insulating films have been obtained by rapid thermal oxidation (RTO) and annealing (RTA), using different temperatures of 600, 700, 800 and 960degC for 40s, in oxygen and nitrogen, respectively. Characterization by Ellipsometry (for fixed refractive index of 1.46), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analyses reveals oxide thickness...
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Millisecond annealing as an equipment technology provides ultra-sharp temperature peaks which favours dopant activation but nearly eliminates dopant diffusion to form extremely shallow highly electrically-activated junctions. On arsenic beamline implanted wafers the formation of ultra-shallow junctions at peak temperatures ranging from 1275degC to 1325degC was investigated. The thermal stability of...
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The Ni-silicide phase formation in FUSI gates was investigated comparing soak and spike anneals for the first RTP step. From both physical analysis on blanket wafers and electrical measurements on nMOS FUSI/HfSiON device it is found that the RTP1 temperature process window (PW) to obtain NiSi or Ni3Si2 at the FUSI/dielectric interface is significantly widened for spike anneals (30degC < PW <...
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The phase transition from pure Ni to Ni2Si and NiSi was studied by in situ Transmission Electron Microscopy analyses from room temperature to 260degC. The reaction starts at 180degC with the formation of small Ni2Si transrotational domains. Their density and size increase by increasing the annealing temperature to 260degC. After 50 min, a uniform transrotational NiSi layer is formed by a grain by...
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Variable Frequency Microwave (VFM) technology has reduced the full cure temperatures of 350degC for PI films to as low as 175degC with only one hour cycle times. PBO films, with standard cure temperatures of 350-380degC, can be fully cured at 185-200degC in one hour with VFM. The resulting VFM cured film properties are equivalent or better than the conventionally cured films and chemically identical...
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Process capability, quality (including uniformity and short-and long-term repeatability), and throughput had been the main focus for the semiconductor tool manufacturers in the past. While these are still in most cases non-negotiable requirements, the chip manufacturers are increasingly paying attention to other tool features as well. Examples include wafer manufacturing process cycle time, tool and...
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Applied materials played a pivotal role in the commercial acceptance of rapid thermal processing (RTP) within the semiconductor industry, largely by solving the problem of precisely measuring and controlling the temperature of silicon. Today, our RTP-based products are used for processes as varied as radical oxidation, gate oxide engineering, metal silicide annealing, and ultra shallow junction annealing...
