Crystallization of semiconductor thin films by flash lamp annealing

Flash lamp annealing is a non-equilibrium annealing method on the sub-second time scale which excellently meets the requirements of thin film processing. It has already been used in microelectronics to activate dopants, to recrystallize amorphous semiconductor layers and to anneal out defects. However, in the last 20 years, flash lamp annealing has opened up new areas of application like thin films on glass, sensors, printed electronics, flexible electronics, batteries etc. Since two years, the Helmholtz Innovation blitzlab aims to transfer this technology to industry and application-related research. In this presentation, we give a short introduction to flash lamp annealing and discuss the pros and cons of this technology for thin film and semiconductor processing. In the main part we report about our activities in the field of Ge-based materials for electronic applications. This includes the n-type doping of Ge above the solubility level by ion implantation and flash lamp annealing, the doping of GeSn alloys, and the fabrication of NiGe for contact formation.