Defect characterization in boron implanted silicon after flash annealing

Flash-assisted rapid thermal processing (fRTP) has gained considerable interests for fabrication of ultra-shallow junction in silicon. fRTP can significantly reduce boron diffusion, while attaining boron activation at levels beyond the limits of traditional rapid thermal annealing. The efficiency of fRTP for defect annealing, however, needs to be systematically explored. In this study, a (1 0 0) silicon wafer was implanted with 500 eV boron ions to a fluence of 1 × 1015 cm−2. fRTP was performed with peak temperatures ranging from 1100 °C to 1300 °C for approximately one milli-second. High resolution transmission electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry were performed to characterize as-implanted and annealed samples. The study shows that fRTP at 1250 °C can effectively anneal defects without causing boron tail diffusion.