The Necessity of RTCVD in Advanced Epitaxial Growth of Si and SiGe

Abstract

AbstractDevice-quality epi material can be grown at temperatures ranging from 600 to 800°C in commercially available production reactors. The exceptionally steep transitions of Ge, B and, to a lesser extent, P, are characteristics of Si and strained SiGe epi growth from dichlorosilane and germane in hydrogen ambient at atmospheric or reduced pressure. Although the growth rates depend on the dopant gas flows at low temperatures, layer thickness and doping level control is excellent. Selective multilayer growth at reduced pressure seems a viable process and can be applied in e.g. HBT's.In spite of the fact that a lot of the progress in low-temperature epitaxy has been made in lampheated reactors, it is argued that RTP is not needed for low-temperature epitaxy. This is in contrast to conventional (high-temperature) epitaxy where RTP is becoming indispensable. Real RTP, heating and cooling the wafer in just a couple of seconds, would improve the throughput of the present generation single wafer epi reactors tremendously and seems feasible.