Buried melting in germanium implanted silicon by millisecond flash lamp annealing

Doping of semiconductors by ion implantation is generally associated with the formation of Gaussian-like concentration/depth profiles. This letter describes a method to achieve localized buried melting at a predetermined depth as the basis for the formation of either a pronounced dopant segregation peak or a homogeneous plateau-like dopant distribution. More specifically, Ge ion implantation was used to lower the melting temperature of the implanted zone, and subsequent flash lamp annealing (FLA) to selectively melt this zone.