Laser annealing with linearly polarized laser radiation

Abstract

A laser annealing method includes generating linearly-polarized pulsed laser radiation using one or more pulsed laser sources and forming a pulsed line beam from the linearly-polarized pulsed laser radiation. The line beam has mutually-orthogonal short and long axes and contains two linear polarization components that are symmetrically inclined with respect to the short axis. A target substrate is laser annealed by scanning the target substrate with the line beam. Each to-be-annealed location on the target substrate is exposed to a series of pulses of the line beam. When the two polarization components have the same power, any resulting non-zero net-polarization of the line beam is along the short or long axis. The method is compatible with solid-state lasers and may mix beams from multiple laser sources such that each laser source contributes to both polarization components of the line beam.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.