Impact of inactive dopants in chemical vapor deposition layers on photomodulated optical reflectance

The ITRS roadmap stresses the electrical characterization of the active doping profiles for sub-32 nm structures as a key challenge for future CMOS technology. Earlier work has shown the promising capabilities of non-destructive photomodulated optical reflectance (PMOR) techniques, based on the localized detection of variations in the reflectivity of the sample, due to thermal and plasma (excess carrier) effects as can be generated by a modulated pump laser such as the Therma-Probe® (TP) system. In this work, we study the impact of the inactive dopant atoms in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) layers both on PMOR and DC reflectance signals. In particular, with the help of numerical simulations, this work shows that, by taking into account the combined degradation of the thermal diffusivity and the recombination lifetime as well as the enhancement of the absorption coefficient, the theory may be rendered semi-quantitative.