RTP rapid thermal processing spike anneal millisecond anneal

Rapid thermal processing (RTP) is the broader category of brief, high-temperature annealing techniques spanning spike anneal (a fast temperature ramp up and down measured in seconds) and the even faster millisecond anneal techniques like laser spike annealing, all sharing the same underlying goal of activating implanted dopants while minimizing the diffusion a longer thermal exposure would cause. The specific technique chosen, conventional spike RTP versus millisecond laser annealing, trades off equipment cost and complexity against how aggressively diffusion needs to be minimized for a given implant's depth sensitivity.