Under a joint development contract with Applied Materials (AMAT) and Texas Instruments (TI), SEMATECH undertook a project (Joint Development Project J100) with a goal of delivering a cost effective, technically advanced Rapid Thermal Processor (RTP). The RTP tool was specified to meet the present and future manufacturing needs of SEMATECH's member companies. The J100 results contained here will focus on the temperature and control performance of the AMAT RTP tool. The evaluation methodology included passive data collection (PDC) to check the tool stability, screening experiments to isolate the variable interaction and to define the process window, broad range and narrow range sensitivity studies to determine the sheet resistance dependence on thermal budget for small increments in temperature set point, perturbation experiments to determine localized control, and stability experiments to check for drift and process repeatability. The impact of wafer emissivity on source/drain rapidthermal annealing was evaluated by processing wafers with varying backside films. The PDC experiments demonstrated the tool to be stable. Screening experiments revealed the strong effect of temperature, followed by time, and time-temperature interaction on sheet resistance. Boron implanted (p+/n) wafers were found to be sensitive at a temperature of 1025 °C or less for a 10 second anneal whereas arsenic implanted wafers (n+/p) showed greater sensitivity at temperatures ranging from 1025 °C to 1100 °C for a 10 second anneal.