Growth kinetics of titanium silicide during heating by RTA and furnace annealing

A comparison of growth kinetics of titanium silicide obtained from the reaction of titanium layers on silicon after heating either by conventional thermal annealing or by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) has been undertaken. Very close results have been found for both treatments when sufficient care has been taken to avoid oxygen contamination during any step of the process. This indicates that no enhanced silicidation reaction is due to RTA itself. However, for oxygen contaminated samples, the kinetics remains essentially the same for RTA while it is showed down for furnace annealing. Then in contrast with conventional annealing, RTA is able to reduce the oxygen influence and to give the real kinetics even on samples containing large amounts of oxygen.