Novel developments in rapid thermal processing (RTP) temperature measurement and control

Since the development of integrated circuits in the 1960's, the semiconductor industry has continued to see the reduction of transistor size in accordance with Moore's law. Rapid thermal processing (RTP) has been an enabling technology for the continued evolution of these ultra-small devices. As thermal budgets have progressively dropped, equipment manufacturers have greatly increased the thermal ramp rates and reduced temperatures for many key processes. Lamp heated technology has developed sub-second dwell times and laser based systems have reduced processing time to milliseconds and shorter. This paper will highlight the key development in RTP temperature measurement and control for two distinct applications. The first is the development of temperature measurements of laser heated substrates. The work will discuss the unique challenges and requirements in this rapidly expanding processing space. These challenges arise from the very high background radiation from the laser sources, the extremely short dwell times, and the high processing temperatures. The second area under discussion is a solution to very low temperature silicon processes-primarily driven by Ni and NiPt silicides that have constrained thermal budgets, thus requiring high ramp rates and short dwell times, but in temperatures below the fundamental limits of standard radiation pyrometry. In particular, this work describes a novel system capable of measuring temperature down to room temperature in a state of the art RTP system.