Defect investigation of excimer laser annealed silicon

In this paper, we study the effect of excimer laser annealing on silicon and specifically the oxygen impurities induced versus laser energy density. We show that oxygen penetration from the native oxide occurs during laser annealing, which increases with increasing laser energy. At higher laser energies, oxygen precipitation occurs well below the surface, which is confirmed both by SIMS and optical spectroscopy analyses. The precipitates do not affect the dopant activation in the epitaxial layer.