Small signal non-contact ac-SPV method for monitoring near surface doping (NSD) in silicon has recently been introduced in commercial diagnostic tools. High chopping frequency light with a submicron penetration depth is used to generate small SPV signal and this signal is in turn monitored using a transparent pickup electrode. This technique has the advantage of producing fast, non-destructive full wafer measurement. Under certain conditions, the magnitude of this ac-SPV signal is inversely proportional to the depletion layer capacitance. If a depletion layer barrier height is known this allows the calculation of the concentration of ionized donors or acceptors in the depletion layer. NSD measurements by ac-SPV method were typically done for doping concentrations up to about 1016 cm−3. Only recently this range has been extended to 1018 cm−3, making it a very attractive technique for monitoring low and medium dose implants and especially for wafer scale mapping of implant uniformity and activation efficiency. In addition, the frequency dependence of the SPV signal provides a mean for evaluating the minority carrier lifetime in the near surface region of bulk and epitaxial wafers.
