Rapid thermal processing: status problems and options after the first 25 years

This paper reviews the current status,l problems and options in RTP systems and process design. Some commercial systems will be discussed along with some improvements that can still be made in temperature reproducibility, process control and yield. This includes some recent developments in temperature reproducibility by compensated emissivity control. Uniformity issues regarding temperature and process gas hydrodynamics are highlighted in relation to reactor design. Especially in CVD applications, where radiative heat transfer may not longer dominate convective and conductive heat transfer, modeling and visualization of gas flow patterns are becoming increasingly important. Here, reactor design should be such that a laminar flow regime is reached without turbulence and without chemical memory effects upon switching to other gas compositions. Some flow visualization results are illustrated. Some new options for micro- and nanocrystallization reactions are presented before we conclude with a technology roadmap to the 1-Gbit era.