LOW TEMPERATURE PROCESS FOR ANNEALING SHALLOW IMPLANTED N+/P JUNCTIONS

Disclosed is a low temperature technique for annealing implantation damage and activating dopants. Conventional furnace annealing requires temperatures as high as 1000 DEG to 1100 DEG C. to completely anneal the dopant implantation damage; 75 KeV arsenic implantation followed by 550 DEG C. for 75 minutes and 900 DEG C. for 30 minutes in nitrogen for instance is not sufficient to anneal the implantation damage and results in a leakage current of the order of 1 mA per cm2. If, however, subsequent to the arsenic implantation, 0.4 KeV hydrogen ions are implanted using a Kaufman ion source with an accelerator current of 200 milliamp, then only 500 DEG to 600 DEG C. for one hour anneal in nitrogen is sufficient to eliminate the arsenic implantation damage. This results in a leakage current of the order of 5 to 25 nA per cm2 and a complete dopant activation is achieved.