PLANARIZATION OF ROUGH SILICON SURFACES BY LASER ANNEALING

Rough silicon (or silicon alloy) surfaces are sometimes obtained after epitaxy or processes for micromachining due to unusual experimental c onditions imposed by external constraints. We show that excimer laser annealing has an efficient ability to reduce roughness to nm scale, pr oviding the surface melts under laser irradiation. No large improvemen t is observed above the melting threshold and only few laser shots (< 10) are often sufficient.