Microwave annealing, a low-thermal-budget process for dopant activation in phosphorus-implanted MOSFET devices

Abstract

In this work, we investigated a low-thermal-budget dopant activation process based on microwave annealing (MWA) of phosphorus ions implanted by plasma doping and compared the proposed technique with the conventional furnace annealing and the rapid thermal annealing processes. We fabricated p-n junction diodes and metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) on silicon and silicon-on-insulator substrates, respectively, in order to examine the dopant activation resulting from MWA. The investigated low-thermal-budget MWA technique proved effective for implanted dopant atom activation and diffusion suppression. In addition, a good interface property between the gate oxide and the silicon channel was achieved. Thus, low-thermal-budget MWA is a promising and effective method for the fabrication of highly-integrated semiconductor devices.