Physical modeling of silicon thermal processing

Thermal annealing of dopants implanted in silicon devices causes redistribution of the implanted profiles. Increasingly this redistribution occurs in a non-equilibrium regime driven by annealing of implant damage. It affects devices in a variety of ways, from threshold variation to deviations from coded length to catastrophic merging of separate profiles. Predictive modeling of modem device profiles requires simulation at several levels, from continuum differential equations down to an atomistic view of implantation-induced defects.