Rapid Thermal Anneal

Rapid thermal anneal's effectiveness is measured by the trade-off between dopant activation percentage, how completely the implanted dopants are moved into electrically active substitutional lattice sites, and diffusion distance, how far those dopants spread from their originally implanted position during the anneal. A higher peak anneal temperature generally improves activation percentage but also increases diffusion, meaning RTA recipe development is fundamentally about finding the specific time-temperature combination that activates dopants adequately without diffusing the profile beyond its design tolerance.