A study on millisecond annealing (MSA) induced layout dependence for flash lamp annealing (FLA) and laser spike annealing (LSA) in multiple MSA scheme with 45 nm high-performance technology

We investigated the dependence of temperature uniformity dufing millisecond annealing (MSA) on the pattern density and its effect on device characteristics and static random access memory (SRAM) yields with 45-nm node technology. By comparing flash lamp annealing (FLA) and laser spike annealing (LSA), we found FLA was difficult to use in our multiple MSA scheme without absorbing layers because of its high temperature uniformity sensitivity to pattern density. LSA was found to be more promising due to its lower sensitivity to pattern density and higher potential for enhancing performance. We also found hot spots were generated during LSA; however, these can easily be avoided by introducing LSA-friendly design rules.