Radiative Properties of Pattered Wafers With Linewidth Below 100 nm
Temperature nonuniformity is a critical problem in rapid thermal processing (RTP) of wafers because it leads to uneven diffusion of implanted dopants and introduces thermal stress that can produce defects. One cause of the problem is nonuniform absorption of thermal radiation, especially in patterned wafers, where the optical properties vary across the surface of the wafer. Recent developments in RTP have lead to the use of millisecond-duration heating cycles, where light with very high power density is used to heat the surface of the wafer. Pattern effects are especially important here, because there is very little time for thermal diffusion to even out temperature distributions during the heating cycle. There have been very few studies on the radiative properties of patterned wafers, especially for the structures expected to be used on advanced semiconductor devices. The feature size is already below 100 nm and is comparable or smaller than the wavelengths of radiation (200–1000 nm) emitted by the flash-lamps typically used for millisecond processing. Hence, this work is devoted to a parametric numerical study of the radiative properties of patterned wafers with the smallest dimension down to 30 nm. The effects of wavelength, wave polarization, and angle of incidence on selected periodically patterned wafers are presented. The methods include the rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) and the effective medium approach (EMA). RCWA is used to obtain exact solutions of Maxwell’s equations, and EMA is used to approximate the periodic structures as a planar multilayer structure with an effective dielectric function. This study provides an assessment of the applicability of EMA for simulations of radiative properties of patterned wafers.