Rapid Thermal Processing and beyond: Applications in Semiconductor Processing

Download or read book Rapid Thermal Processing and beyond: Applications in Semiconductor Processing written by Wielfried Lerch and published by Trans Tech Publications Ltd. This book was released on 2008-03-24 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heat-treatment and thermal annealing are very common processing steps which have been employed during semiconductor manufacturing right from the beginning of integrated circuit technology. In order to minimize undesired diffusion, and other thermal budget-dependent effects, the trend has been to reduce the annealing time sharply by switching from standard furnace batch-processing (involving several hours or even days), to rapid thermal processing involving soaking times of just a few seconds. This transition from thermal equilibrium, to highly non-equilibrium, processing was very challenging and is still a field ripe for further development.