This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project focuses on development of novel high-temperature annealing system for processing for advanced silicon on insulator (SOI) devices. The present rapid thermal annealing (RTA) systems, lead to substantial profile broadening because of their large time constants. The company proposes the development of a novel Hybrid Rapid Thermal Process (HRTP) system which combines all the advantages of RTA and laser annealing while at the same time eliminating its disadvantages. The use of SOI wafers can further extend annealing times by significantly reducing heat flow to the substrates. In the Phase I we plan to conduct simulation and preliminary experimental studies to establish the viability of this concept and obtain the necessary design parameters to construct a prototype system during Phase II of this project. Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) systems are a critical part of semiconductor manufacturing operations and are used to form gate oxides, silicides and annealed ionimplanted dopants for formation of ultra-shallow junctions.
Commercially, the market-size for these applications exceeds $500 M/year. With the rapid miniaturization of the devices, there is a strong need to develop higher ramp rate and higher temperature annealing systems to achieve the formation of ultra-shallow junctions. The proposed HRTP system is expected to fill this niche The HRTP system can also be used in thermal annealing of wide band gap semiconductors such as GaN and SiC as they require extremely high temperature, which cannot be achieved by traditional systems.
