Application of electron beams in thermal processing of semiconductor materials and devices

Rapid and effective thermal processing methods using electron beams are described in this paper. Heating times ranging from a fraction of a second to several seconds and temperatures up to 1400°C are attainable. Applications such as the annealing of ion implanted material, both without significant dopant diffusion and with highly controlled diffusion of impurities, are described. The technique has been used successfully to activate source/drain regions for fine geometry NMOS transistors. It is shown that electron beams can produce localised heating of semiconductor substrates and a resolution of approximately 1 μm has been achieved. Electron beam heating has been applied to improving the crystalline quality of silicon-on sapphire used in CMOS device fabrication. Silicon layers with defect levels approaching bulk material have been obtained. Finally, the combination of isothermal and selective annealing is shown to have application in recrystallisation of polysilicon films on an insulating layer. The approach provides the opportunity of producing a silicon-on-insulator substrate with improved crystalline quality compared to silicon-on-sapphire at a potentially lower cost. It is suggested that rapid heating methods are expected to provide a real alternative to conventional furnace processing of semiconductor devices in the development of fabrication technology. © 1984 Benn electronics Publications Ltd, Luton.

RESIDUAL DEFECTS FOLLOWING RAPID ANNEALING OF BORON IMPLANTED SILICON WITH AND WITHOUT PREAMORPHISATION BY SILICON IMPLANTATION.

Implants of boron into silicon which has been made amorphous by silicon implantation have a shallower depth profile than the same implants into silicon. This results in higher activation and restricted diffusion of the B implants after annealing, and there are also significant differences in the microstructure after annealing compared with B implants into silicon. Rapid isothermal heating with an electron beam and furnace treatments are used to characterize the defect structure as a function of time and temperature. Defects are seen to influence the diffusion of non-substitutional boron.

Low temperature annealing effects on the structure and optical properties of ZnO films grown by pulsed laser deposition

ZnO thin films were deposited on glass substrates at room temperature (RT) similar to 500 degrees C by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique and then were annealed at 150-450 degrees C in air. The effects of annealing temperature on the microstructure and optical properties of the thin films deposited at each substrate temperature were investigated by XRD, SEM, transmittance spectra, and photoluminescence (PL). The results showed that the c-axis orientation of ZnO thin films was not destroyed by annealing treatments: the grain size increased and stress relaxed for the films deposited at 200-500 degrees C, and thin films densified for the films deposited at RT with increasing annealing temperature. The transmittance spectra indicated that E-g of thin films showed a decreased trend with annealing temperature. From the PL measurements, there was a general trend, that is UV emission enhanced with lower annealing temperature and disappeared at higher annealing temperature for the films deposited at 200-500 degrees C; no UV emission was observed for the films deposited at RT regardless of annealing treatment. Improvement of grain size and stoichiometric ratio with annealing temperature can be attributed to the enhancement of UV emission, but the adsorbed oxygen species on the surface and grain boundary of films are thought to contribute the annihilation of UV emission. It seems that annealing at lower temperature in air is an effective method to improve the UV emission for thin films deposited on glass substrate at substrate temperature above RT.

Crystallization of amorphous Si films by pulsed laser annealing and their structural characteristics

Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) films were prepared by pulsed laser annealed crystallization of amorphous silicon (alpha-Si) films on SiO2-coated quartz or glass substrates. The effect of laser energy density on structural characteristics of nc-Si films was investigated. The Ni-induced crystallization of the a-Si films was also discussed. The surface morphology and microstructure of these films were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, high-resolution electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and Raman scattering spectroscopy. The results show that not only can the alpha-Si films be crystallized by the laser annealing technique, but also the size of Si nanocrystallites can be controlled by varying the laser energy density. Their average size is about 4-6 nm. We present a surface tension and interface strain model used for describing the laser annealed crystallization of the alpha-Si films. The doping of Ni atoms may effectively reduce the threshold value of laser energy density to crystallize the alpha-Si films, and the flocculent-like Si nanostructures could be formed by Ni-induced crystallization of the alpha-Si films.

Effects of annealing time and Si cap layer thickness on the Si/SiGe/Si heterostructures thermal stability

The effects of annealing time and Si cap layer thickness: on the thermal stability of the Si/SiGe/Si heterostructures deposited by disilane and solid-Ge molecule beam epitaxy were investigated. It is found that in the same strain state of the SiGe layers the annealing time decreases with increasing Si cap layer thickness. This effect is analyzed by a force-balance theory and an equation has been obtained to characterize the relation between the annealing time and the Si cap layer thickness. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of annealing time and Si cap layer thickness on the Si/SiGe/Si heterostructures thermal stability

The effects of annealing time and Si cap layer thickness: on the thermal stability of the Si/SiGe/Si heterostructures deposited by disilane and solid-Ge molecule beam epitaxy were investigated. It is found that in the same strain state of the SiGe layers the annealing time decreases with increasing Si cap layer thickness. This effect is analyzed by a force-balance theory and an equation has been obtained to characterize the relation between the annealing time and the Si cap layer thickness. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Rapid synthesis of polyethylenimine-protected Prussian blue nanocubes through a thermal process

Polyethylenimine (PEI)-protected Prussian blue nanocubes have been simply synthesized by heating an acidic mixture of PEI, FeCl3, K3Fe(CN)(6), and KCI. The experiment results presented here demonstrate that the pH of the mixture plays an important role in controlling the shape and composition of the resultant product.

Two and Three Photon Absorption in Rhodamine 6G Methanol Solutions Using Pulsed Thermal Lens Technique

Dual beam transient thermal lens studies were carried out in rhodamine 6G methanol solutions using 532 nm pulses from a frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser. Analysis of thermal lens signal shows the existence of different nonlinear processes like two photon absorption and three photon absorption phenomena along with one photon absorption. Concentration of the dye in the solution has been found to influence the occurrence of the different processes in a significant way.