Role of rapid isothermal processing (RIP) in cycle time reduction

Over the last few years, rapid isothermal processing (RIP) is emerging as a key low thermal budget single wafer processing technique. The heating of the wafers in RIP can be accomplished using lamps mounted (relative to the wafer front surface) either at the bottom, sides, top or a combination of these arrangements. The lamp configuration in commercially available RIP systems varies from vendor to vendor. Each configuration provides a different high energy photon flux on the wafer's front surface. Due to certain quantum effects initiated by high energy photons, the processing time depends on the specific lamp configuration used for a given processing temperature. As a result of these quantum photoeffects, properly designed RIP systems can further reduce the cycle time and provide improved performance over other systems. Experimental results for typical processing steps (front and back end of the line) are provided in this paper.