During spike annealing of ultra-shallow junctions, large fractions of the dopants form a partially active pile-up at the interface between silicon and the screening oxide layer. In this paper, we show results of sheet resistance, SIMS and high resolution Elastic Recoil Detection measurements to investigate the physical and electrical behaviour of B and As dopant atoms at the interface.

Our results show that the fraction of dopants segregated at the interface is as high as 30-50% for B, but is dependent on dose and the type of screening oxide. Concentrations of up to 3e20cm-3 and more of active dopants are found on the Si side of the interface. The presence of nitrogen in the oxide at the interface causes a higher and sharper pile-up. Results indicate that a similar peak is expected for As, with active concentrations above 6e20cm-3. In an HF dip, the pile-up is removed together with the oxide or deactivated during native oxide regrowth.

Further experiments show that immediately after removing the screening oxide in an HF dip the sheet resistance for B decreases sharply due to carrier accumulation, then raises to about 6-9% above the initial level depending on the oxide and dopant species. The sharp decrease in resistance is not observed for As.