Rapid Thermal Anneal with Conductive Heating for SiC Contact Formation

This paper explains the potential of a heat conduction based RTA (Rapid Thermal Anneal) system (Levo) to overcome the main shortcomings of conventional lamp heated tools systems for silicide top contact anneal during SiC MOSFET device fabrication. The advantage of conductive heating is that the radiation-related properties, like transparency of the wafer, does not play a role, and consequently, that the whole rapid thermal anneal becomes independent of wafer type. In this study SiC wafers and Si wafers (both 200mm) were annealed consecutively without any system adjustment. The silicon wafers were used to qualify the process (contamination / within-wafer uniformity and wafer-to-wafer repeatability).