Low Temperature Dopant Activation for Integrated Electronics Applications

A major area of research for integrated electronic systems is the development of systems on glass or plastic. These alternative substrate materials impose significant constraints on electronic device fabrication, including limitations on chemical and thermal processes. This work presents an investigation on the activation of ion-implanted dopants without using the high temperature processes of conventional CMOS. The annealing temperature applied was 600degC, which could potentially enable integrated microelectronics on high-quality glass. Additional factors studied included the annealing technique (furnace or rapid thermal processing), and the use of pre-amorphization implants. Ion-implant modeling along with SIMS and SRP data was used to develop a comprehensive understanding of the experimental results. The performance of transistors fabricated with low-temperature constraints on both bulk silicon and thin- film SOI was presented.