Current capabilities and future needs for semiconductor ion implantation (invited)

Abstract

For many years the largest commercial application for particle accelerators has been semiconductor ion implantation. These tools differ from other accelerators in many respects. In particular they are automated to a very high degree and, in addition to technical performance requirements their success depends on other key metrics including productivity, availability and cost of ownership. These tools also operate with a large variety of species, four orders of magnitude of energy range and five orders of magnitude of dose range. The ion source is a key component of implanters with its own performance metrics that include beam current, lifetime, and materials cost. In this paper, we describe the primary applications for ion implantation and some of the beam line architectures that are used. We describe the ion source that has evolved for this application. Some key future challenges for implanter ion source development are also discussed.