Implantation annealing by thermal imaging

Elliptical mirrors have been used to image incoherent light sources onto silicon for the purpose of annealing implanted layers. It is found that ~1 s of illumination is sufficient for annealing areas that approximate the dimensions of the source. Low-dose boron implants are found to be fully activated without any significant diffusive redistribution. Amorphous layers produced by implanting arsenic can be annealed to exhibit minimum yields of ~4% from back-scattering and give sheet resistivities comparable with thermal annealed values. It is envisioned that the annealing can be expanded to large areas and throughputs by physically moving wafers through the 2 in-long heating strip produced by the present configuration.