Optimisation of a combined transient-ion-drift/rapid thermal annealing process for copper detection in silicon

The transient ion drift (TID) technique has been recently proposed for copper trace detection in silicon. Cu atoms may be present either in the vicinity of the Si surface or within the volume. In the latter case they are either gathered at secondary defects or form precipitates believed to be silicides. In order to become detectable by TID Cu atoms must be put into the highly mobile interstitial state. Depending on the initial configuration of the Cu/Si system different physical mechanisms may enable Cu atoms to become ‘TID active’. In this work we study the Cu activation process using rapid thermal processing (RTP) in an attempt to minimise the thermal budget required to achieve a complete activation. Both, surface and volume contaminated samples are investigated. During RTP treatments the activation of surface Cu atoms is found to proceed significantly faster than during standard furnace anneal. We tentatively attribute this behaviour to the UV light exposure associated with the RTP, which may enhance the release of copper atoms from the surface. The dissolution kinetics of the Cu precipitates occurring during RTPs are found to be only limited by Cu diffusion. The RTP/TID process is used to study the low temperature reaction path of supersaturated Cu. If prior to the RTP process, Cu atoms are chemically removed from the surface or near surface region, TID measures only the residual bulk Cu atoms. Our results show that out-diffusion and near-surface precipitation are reducing mostly the copper supersaturation.