Effect of Pulse Number on Dopant Activation in Silicon during Shallow p+/n Junction Formation by Non-Melt Excimer Laser Annealing

¹ Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology, UniversitiTeknologi Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
² Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
³ SEN Corporation, SBSTower 9F, 4-10-1 Yoga, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 158-0097, Japan

^a sitirahmah.aid@utm.my (corresponding author)
^b azurahamzah@utm.my
^c sumiaty.kl@utm.my
^d matsumoto@utm.my
^e zaharah@utm.my
^f fuse_gns@senova.co.jp

Abstract

Shallow p+/njunctions were formed using Ge-PAI and low-energy/high-dose boron-ion implantation, followed by thermal annealing involving nanosecondnon-melt excimer laser annealingandrapidthermal annealing. The effect of laser pulse number on dopant activation and regrowth of a-Si layer are discussed.We found that laser annealing aloneis insufficient to regrow a-Si layer and activate dopant. In contrast, activationwas observed in the samples that were subjected to preannealingrapid thermal annealing followed by non-melt laser annealing; with slight increase of sheet resistance valuewhen the number of laser pulse shot was increased. This is considered due to the interaction of dopant and supersaturated defect in the remaining a-Si layer.The percentage of defect-dopant interaction increased with the pulse shot numbers which contributed to the decrease in activation level.