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.

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.

This is the first definitive book on rapid thermal processing (RTP), an essential namufacturing technology for single-wafer processing in highly controlled environments. Written and edited by nine experts in the field, this book covers a range of topics for academics and engineers alike, moving from basic theory to advanced technology for wafer manufacturing. The book also provides new information on the suitability or RTP for thin film deposition, junction formation, silicides, epitaxy, and in situ processing. Complete discussions on equipment designs and comparisons between RTP and other processing approaches also make this book useful for supplemental information on silicon processing, VLSI processing, and integrated circuit engineering.

"Electronics, Dielectric Science and Technology, and High Temperature Materials Divisions."

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