Effective dopant activation via low temperature microwave annealing of ion implanted silicon

Susceptor-assisted microwave annealing enables effective dopant activation, at low temperatures, in ion-implanted Si. Given similar thermal budgets for microwave annealing and rapid thermal annealing (RTA), sheet resistances of microwave annealed Si, with either B⁺ or P⁺ implants, are lower than the values obtained using RTA. The fraction of dopants activated is as high as 18% for B⁺ implants and 64% for P⁺ implants. Dopant diffusion is imperceptible after microwave annealing, but significant after RTA, for P⁺ implanted Si samples with the same dopant activation. Microwave annealing achieves such properties using shorter anneal times and lower peak temperatures compared to RTA.