Solid Phase Recrystallization in Arsenic Ion-Implanted Silicon-On-Insulator by Microsecond UV Laser Annealing

UV laser annealing (UV-LA) enables surface-localized high-temperature thermal processing to form abrupt junctions in emerging monolithically stacked devices, where the applicable thermal budget is restricted. In this work, UV-LA is performed to regrow a silicon-on-insulator wafer partially amorphized by arsenic ion implantation as well as to activate the dopants. In a microsecond scale ( 10^-6 s to 10^-5 s) UV-LA process, monocrystalline solid phase recrystallization and dopant activation without junction deepening are evidenced, thus opening various applications in low thermal budget integration flows. However, some concerns remain. First, the surface morphology is degraded after the regrowth, possibly because of the non-perfect uniformity of the used laser beam and/or the formation of defects near the surface involving the excess dopants. Second, many of the dopants are inactive and seem to form deep levels in the Si band gap, suggesting a further optimization of the ion implantation condition to manage the initial crystal damage and the heating profile to better accommodate the dopants into the substitutional sites.