Time-resolved reflectance studies of silicon during laser thermal processing of amorphous silicon gates on ultrathin gate oxides

In this paper, we report the systematic investigation on the melt characteristics of silicon during laser thermal processing (LTP) of amorphous silicon (a-Si) gates on ultrathin gate oxides. LTP is used to reduce the gate depletion effect in advanced semiconductor devices. The influence of implantation-induced damage and chemical inhomogeneities on the melt behavior of ion-implanted a-Si is studied using in situ time-resolved reflectance (TRR) measurements and ex situ secondary ion mass spectrometry. The results from TRR measurements indicate the presence of a buried melt for a-Si implanted with B⁺ at a subamorphizing dose. In contrast, such a melt behavior is not observed during LTP of undoped a-Si and a-Si implanted with As⁺ at an amorphizing dose. We attribute the marked difference in the melt characteristics to the competitive effects between compositional inhomogeneities and the extent of amorphization in the a-Si layer. It should be noted that the as-deposited a-Si gate is not really “amorphous” in the sense of an ion beam-induced amorphous layer. This postulation is verified by the absence of a buried melt in a-Si films implanted with Si⁺ prior to B⁺ implantation, where the dose of the Si⁺ implant is sufficient to cause amorphization in silicon and the amorphization depth greatly exceeds the projected range of the boron implant. © 2004 American Institute of Physics.