ANNEALING KINETICS DURING RAPID THERMAL-PROCESSING OF EXCIMER LASER-INDUCED DEFECTS IN VIRGIN SILICON

The annealing kinetics of two dominant defects (E(0.34 eV) and E(0.60 eV)) induced in virgin Fz n-type silicon by ArF excimer laser (193 nm, 0.75 J/cm2) irradiation have been studied within the temperature range 500-650°C using rapid thermal processing (RTP). With deep-level transient spectroscopy measurements, we have observed that the reaction rates for both defects obey first-order kinetics. The E(0.34 eV) defect is shown to disappear with an activation energy of 0.7 ± 0.1 eV and a frequency factor of 2 x 108 s-1. In this case, the annealing is enhanced by the ionization of this defect during RTA processing. The E(0.60 eV) trap is annealed at a faster rate exhibiting an activation energy of 1.15 ± 0.1 eV and a frequency factor of 1014 s-1. © 1990.