Patent ID: 8017528

Claim:
An impurity-activating thermal process method, wherein a thermal cycle is successively repeated in a plurality of iterations in an impurity-activating thermal process after a target is subjected to an impurity introduction step, wherein each thermal cycle includes: increasing a temperature from an initial temperature to a first predetermined temperature T 1 (° C.) at an arbitrary first temperature-increasing rate R 1 (° C./sec); holding the temperature at the first predetermined temperature T 1 (° C.) for an arbitrary first holding period t 1 (sec); increasing the temperature from the first predetermined temperature T 1 (° C.) to a second predetermined temperature T 2 (° C.) at a second temperature-increasing rate R 2 (° C./sec) of 1.0×10 7 (° C./sec) or less; holding the temperature at the second predetermined temperature T 2 (° C.) for a second holding period t 2 (sec) of 50 msec or less; decreasing the temperature from the second predetermined temperature T 2 (° C.) to the first predetermined temperature T 1 (° C.) at a first temperature-decreasing rate R 1 ′ (° C./sec) of 1.0×10 7 (° C./sec) or less; holding the temperature at the first predetermined temperature T 1 (° C.) for an arbitrary third holding period t 3 (sec); and decreasing the temperature from the first predetermined temperature T 1 (° C.) to a final temperature at an arbitrary second temperature-decreasing rate R 2 ′ (° C./sec), a beam scan-type laser is used as a heat source in the activation thermal process, the target includes SiGe, and an overlap of the beam of the laser is increased to thereby increase the number of times a same location of the target is irradiated with the laser beam.