Effects of low-temperature (≈500 • C) microwave annealing (MWA) of Cluster-Carbon (C 7 ) and Phosphorus implants are compared with rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at 900 and 1000 • C for (100) and (110)-Si substrates. MWA annealing resulted in high levels of substitutional Carbon, 1.57% for (100)Si and 0.99% for (110)Si for C 7 implants. Addition of high-dose Phosphorus implants resulted in lower but still useful substitutional Carbon levels, 1.44% for (100)Si and 0.68% for (110)Si after MWA. RTA annealing at higher temperatures resulted in greatly reduced substitutional Carbon levels and deeper Phosphorus junctions. The effects of subsequent anneals by MWA and RTA methods are reported. MWA is shown to be a promising method for high-channel tensile strain in nMOSFETs with a substantially lower thermal budget than RTA.

In this letter, rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and microwave annealing (MA) are compared to demonstrate the dopant activation. Using microwave annealing, the dopant in the Si was well-activated and showed suppressed dopant diffusion, as compared to traditional high temperature RTA. In addition, SiN(x) films after low temperature MA treatment presented higher tensile stress than the films annealed by RTA. Therefore, this MA approach could potentially be applied to these behaviors of I distribution and higher tensile stress SiNx film may be useful in contact etch-stop layer or stress memorization technique in the fabrication of small pitch nanoscaled n-channel Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors. (C) 2011 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/1.3536462] All rights reserved