The development of a powerful vortex stabilized flash lamp for RTP applications

Summary form only given, as follows. The dopant activation process used during manufacture of modern logic chip devices requires ever steeper heating and cooling ramp rates of the silicon wafer. Tungsten filament lamps traditionally provided the heat source for this process. However, due to their inherent limitations, a new technology is required to deliver the thermal energy profile for future generations of semiconductor processing. The requirements for future rapid thermal processing (RTP) of semiconductor wafers will be discussed from the standpoint of available radiation sources. The key characteristics of these radiation sources for wafer processing and their impact on the RTP process will be described. Based on these different approaches a candidate radiation source satisfying future RTP requirements has been developed. It is a 300 mm long flash lamp based on a Vortek water vortex stabilized high-pressure high-power arc lamp. This flash lamp is much more powerful than any other commercially available flash lamp. It has been specifically designed for the said RTP application and typically operates with peak currents up to 50 kA and pulse widths of the order of 1 to 2 ms. The general operation of this flash lamp will be described.