Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Kazuma Takahashi

Kenji Yoneda

Masahiko Niwayama

A thermal cycle includes: increasing a temperature from an initial temperature to a temperature Tat an arbitrary rate R(&#xb0; C./sec); holding the temperature at the temperature Tfor an arbitrary period t(sec); increasing the temperature from the temperature Tto a temperature Tat a rate R(&#xb0; C./sec) of 1.0&#xd7;10(&#xb0; C./sec) or less; and holding the temperature at the temperature Tfor a period t(sec) of 50 msec or less. The thermal cycle thereafter includes: decreasing the temperature from the temperature Tto the temperature Tat a rate R' (&#xb0; C./sec) of 1.0&#xd7;10(&#xb0; C./sec) or less; holding the temperature Tfor an arbitrary period t(sec); and decreasing the temperature from the temperature Tto a final temperature at an arbitrary rate R&#x2032; (&#xb0; C./sec). Such a thermal cycle is successively repeated in a plurality of iterations.

Impurity-activating thermal process method and thermal process apparatus

An impurity-activating thermal process is performed after a target is subjected to an impurity introduction step. In this thermal process, while a spike RTA process including a holding period for holding a temperature at a predetermined temperature is performed, at least one iteration of millisecond annealing at a temperature higher than the predetermined temperature is performed during the holding period of the spike RTA process.

A method for fabricating a semiconductor device includes the steps of: forming a semiconductor region of a first conductive type on a semiconductor wafer; forming a gate electrode on the semiconductor region; on the semiconductor region, forming a first insulating film over the whole surface including the upper surface of the gate electrode; by removing the formed first insulating film through etching from the top surface side, forming first sidewalls, covering the side surfaces of the gate electrode, from the first insulating film; and by implanting first impurity ions of a second conductive type to the semiconductor region by using an ion implantation device capable of processing a plurality of semiconductor wafers collectively, forming first impurity diffusion regions on both sides of the gate electrode in the semiconductor region. In the step of forming the first impurity diffusion regions, implantation of the first impurity ions are dividedly performed a plurality of times, and the semiconductor wafer is rotated in its wafer surface for each ion implantation.

Growing community of inventors

Hyogo, Japan

Kazuma Takahashi