The successful use of rapid thermal processing in an isothermal mode to form Ti polycide structures is described. The silicide was sputter deposited from a composite Ti-Si target onto phosphorus-doped poly-Si. The resulting polycide structure was annealed by exposure to the blackbody radiation from a resistively-heated graphite heater. Rapid diffusion of the P into the Ti silicide is observed even for short annealing times, although resulting P concentrations in the silicide (>7 × 1018cm−3) are relatively low, about 100 times lower than in the doped poly-Si. Properly chosen RTP parameters can minimize the sheet resistance of the polycide without increasing the sheet resistance of the underlying poly-Si layer, which has not been possible for furnace-annealed samples.

High dose (1–7 1017cm−2), low energy (10–40 keV) C implanted Si samples were annealed by conventional thermal procedure and by pulsed electron beam. Characterization is performed by I.R., electron diffraction and Rutherford Backscattering. Effect of PEBA is equivalent to thermal annealing at 900°C. No C redistribution occurs and a poor recrystallization of the SiC formed during implantation is observed.

Thin films of GeSe2 are synthesized by laser irradiation of Ge-Se sandwiches, with 2Se:IGe atomic proportion. The synthesized free-standing films are demonstrated to have the monoclinic crystal structure of GeSe2. Moreover, they exhibit a preferential orientation, with the c-axis perpendicular to the plane of the film. Films synthesized on glass substrate are characterized by an indirect optical energy gap of 2.3 eV, in agreement with published data on GeSe2. The melting point of Ge is not attained in the case of films on glass substrate.

Crystalline AulO0−x Bix alloy films (200≤×≤90) could be transformed into an amorphous state by either+laser (20 ns pulse length, 248 nm) or ion bombardment (Ar ions, 300 keV) of these films, which were mounted onto a substrate kept at low temperatures ( <10K). Several metastable Phases could beobtained by annealing of the amorphous phase before the starting equilibrium phase mixture was formed. The different phases were characterized by their different superconducting and electrical properties.

Films of Ta metal on uranium and of Ir metal on tantalum have been irradiated and melted by pulses from Q-switched Ruby and frequency-doubled Nd:YAG lasers to investigate the nature of the resulting mixtures in light of the very different binary-phase diagrams of the two systems. In addition, a two-phase Ir-Ta alloy has been surface-processed with CW CO2 -laser radiation and with an electron beam in order to study microstructure refinement and test the advantage of using alloys as opposed to film-on-substrate combinations for the developement of claddings.

The effects of pulsed electron beam irradiation (pulse width 50 ns FWHM, electron eneries from 15 to 30 keV and current density in the range of 100 to 2300 A/cm2 ) on Al-Pb systemsprepared by vacuum evaporation of Pb layers from 500 Å to 2000 Å in thickness over Al single crystals have been investigated by Rutherford backscattering (RBS) and scanning electron microscopy.

The main effects consist in a Pb loss which shows definite features as a function of the incident beam current density and in a mixing of Pb into Al which is unambiguously detected by a selective chemical etching of Pb still unreacted after irradiation.

These experimental results are discussed on the basis of some heat flow model calculations which use Monte-Carlo data for the electron depth dose function.

We have previously described the formation of thin AlSb films by laser irradiation of sandwich-like structures of the components, and have shown that under quasi-adiabatic conditions, the transformation can be triggered by furnishing sufficient laser energy to just melt a part of the components; subsequent progressive liberation of the heat of formation of the compound drives the reaction to completion. In this paper, we clarify some details of the reaction and we investigate the influence of initial layer structure,thermal history, and total film thickness on the required laser threshold energy.