ION IMPLANTATION
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Ion implantation is an alternative to deposition diffusion and is used to produce a shallow surface region of dopant atoms deposited into a silicon wafer.
In this process a beam of impurity ions is accelerated to kinetic energies in the range of several tens of kV and is directed to the surface of the silicon.
As the impurity atoms enter the crystal, they give up their energy to the lattice in collisions and finally come to rest at some average penetration depth, called the projected range expressed in μm.
Depending on the impurity and its implantation energy, the range in a given semiconductor may vary from a few hundred angstroms to about 1 μm.
Typical distribution of impurity about the projected range is approximately Gaussian. By performing several implantations at different energies, it is possible to synthesize a desired impurity distribution, uniformly doped region.
A gas containing the desired impurity is ionized within the ion source. The ions are generated and repelled from their source in a diverging beam that is focused before it passes through a mass separator that directs only the ions of the desired speed through a narrow aperture.
A second lens focuses this resolved beam which then passes through an accelerator that brings the ions to their required energy before they strike the target and become implanted in the exposed areas of the silicon wafers.
The accelerating voltages may be from 20 kV to as much as 250 kV. In some ion implanters, the mass separation occurs after the ions are accelerated to high energy.
Because the ion beam is small, means are provided for scanning it uniformly across the wafers. For this purpose the focused ion beam is scanned electro statically over the surface of the wafer in the target chamber.
Repetitive scanning in a raster pattern provides exceptional uniform doping of the wafer surface. The target chamber commonly includes automatic wafer handling facilities to speed up the process of implanting many wafers per hour.
Annealing after Implantation. After the ions have been implanted they are lodged principally in interstitial positions in the silicon crystal structure, and the surface region into which the implantation has taken place will be heavily damaged by the impact of the high energy ions.
The disarray of silicon atoms in the surface region is often to the extent that this region is no longer crystalline in structure but, rather, amorphous. To restore this surface region back to a well ordered crystalline state and to allow the implanted ions to go into substitutional sites in the crystal structure, the wafer must be subjected to an annealing process.
The annealing process usually involves the heating of the wafers to some elevated temperature, often in the range of 1000°C for a suitable length of time such as 30 minutes. Laser beam and electron beam annealing are also employed.
In such annealing techniques only the surface region of the wafer is heated and recrystallized. An ion implantation process is often followed by a conventional type drive-in diffusion, in which case the annealing process will occur as part of the drive-in diffusion.
Ion implantation is a substantially more expensive process than conventional deposition diffusion, both in terms of the cost of the equipment and the throughput.
Advantages of Ion Implantation.
(i) Ion implantation provides much more precise control over the density of dopants (Q) deposited into the wafer, and hence the sheet resistance. This is possible because both the accelerating voltage and the ion beam current are electrically controlled outside of the apparatus in which the implants occur.
(ii) Very low dosage, low energy implantations are also used for the adjustment of the threshold voltage of MOSFETs and other applications.
(iii) It can be done at relatively low temperatures, this means that doped layers can be implanted without disturbing previously diffused regions. This means a lesser tendency for lateral spreading.
(iv) A precise quantity of impurity can be introduced. Since the beam current can be measured accurately during implantation
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