Innovative Annealing Apparatus for Mercury-Based, Compound Semiconductors

Our proposed large wafer re-usable annealing system (RAS) will significantly increase temperature stability, uniformity, and control – increasing the yield of high quality MCT devices. Provided in this proposal is a detailed process for engineering an advanced annealing system, that begins with identifying key annealing parameters. SOAL has been developing RAS for over one year and has a stronger understanding of creating an innovative MCT annealing system than most other companies. Therefore, SOAL is in a unique position to develop RAS with a substantially lower level of risk. We also have several years of experience in designing and fabricating prototypes, thermal modeling and writing software programs. Each of these has been utilized in our preliminary designs, and discussed in this effort. We intend to model thermal variations on a variety of furnace and annealing components, with the goal of gaining invaluable insight to each designs probable performance. RAS was designed to incorporate the proven concepts of Hg annealing into a more stable, controllable, and re-usable Hg annealing system for large MCT wafers.