Furnace Anneal
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Furnace annealing is a process used in
semiconductor device fabrication Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuits (ICs) such as microprocessors, microcontrollers, and memories (such as Random-access memory, RAM and flash memory). It is a ...
which consist of heating multiple
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
wafers in order to affect their electrical properties. Heat treatments are designed for different effects. Wafers can be heated in order to activate
dopant A dopant (also called a doping agent) is a small amount of a substance added to a material to alter its physical properties, such as electrical or optics, optical properties. The amount of dopant is typically very low compared to the material b ...
s, change film to film or film to wafer substrate interfaces, densify deposited films, alter states of grown films, repair damage from implants, move dopants or drive dopants from one film into another or from a film into the wafer substrate. During ion implantation process, the crystal substrate is damaged due to bombardment with high energy ions. The damage caused can be repaired by subjecting the crystal to high temperature. This process is called annealing. Furnace anneals may be integrated into other furnace processing steps, such as oxidations, or may be processed on their own. Furnace anneals are performed by equipment especially built to heat
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
wafers. Furnaces are capable of processing many wafers at a time, but each process can last between several hours and a day. Increasingly, furnace anneals are being supplanted by Rapid Thermal Anneal (RTA) or
Rapid Thermal Processing Rapid thermal processing (RTP) is a semiconductor manufacturing process which heats silicon wafers to temperatures exceeding 1,000°C for not more than a few seconds. During cooling wafer temperatures must be brought down slowly to prevent disloc ...
(RTP). This is due to the relatively long thermal cycles of furnaces that causes the dopants which are being activated, especially boron, to diffuse further than is intended. RTP or RTA fixes this by having thermal cycles for each wafer that is of the order of minutes rather than hours for furnace anneals.


External links

;Equipment
Consolidated Engineering Company
Annealing furnaces cover a broad range of Steel and Aluminum applications including tempering, normalizing, and aging, and similar automated loading, unloading and natural or forced cooling is possible with roller hearth, tip-up or batch arrangements.

annealing furnaces for semiconductor, solar, display and electronic applications
Tokyo Electron Limited
TELFORMULA and TELINDY PLUS Semiconductor device fabrication {{electronics-stub