Laser annealing of silicon

Developments in the use of lasers to probe material properties of silicon are described, beginning with their origins in the laser annealing of damage in ion-implanted Si. Basic mechanisms of energy deposition and transfer from the photons to the phonons and heat flow in the lattice are discussed. Fundamental understanding of crucial materials issues such as the redistribution of impurities during rapid solidification, metastable phase formation, interface kinetics and the phase diagram of metastable phases of silicon are examined as examples of work that evolved from early experiments on laser annealing.