A method of operating an apparatus for laser annealing, includes reducing temporal or spatial coherency of a plurality of laser beams by beam superimposing; and reducing an electric field inner product magnitude of beams having the reduced temporal or spatial coherency by a fly eye lens array to reduce coherency, and/or by modifying a polarization state between the beams by beam superimposing.

A laser irradiation method of irradiating, with a pulse laser beam, an irradiation object in which an impurity source film is formed on a semiconductor substrate includes: reading fluence per pulse of the pulse laser beam with which a rectangular irradiation region set on the irradiation object is irradiated and the number of irradiation pulses the irradiation region is irradiated, the fluence being equal to or larger than a threshold at or beyond which ablation potentially occurs to the impurity source film when the irradiation object is irradiated with pulses of the pulse laser beam in the irradiation pulse number and smaller than a threshold at or beyond which damage potentially occurs to the surface of the semiconductor substrate; calculating a scanning speed Vdx; and moving the irradiation object at the scanning speed Vdx relative to the irradiation region while irradiating the irradiation region with the pulse laser beam at the repetition frequency f.

A device for generating a laser line on a work plane includes a first laser light source configured to generate a first raw laser beam, a second laser light source configured to generate a second raw laser beam, and an optical arrangement configured to reshape the first raw laser beam to form a first illumination beam with a first caustic and a first beam profile, and reshape the second raw laser beam to form a second illumination beam with a second caustic and a second beam profile. The first illumination beam and the second illumination beam are directed with overlap on the work plane and define a joint illumination direction. The first beam profile and the second beam profile jointly form the laser line on the work plane. The optical arrangement is configured to position the first caustic and the second caustic offset from one another in the illumination direction.

The laser reflow apparatus of the present invention comprises a laser pressurization head module for pressing a bonding object, which includes a plurality of electronic components arranged on a substrate by a transmissive pressurization member while irradiating a laser beam through the pressurization member, to bond the electronic components to the substrate; and a bonding object transfer module for transferring the bonding object having transferred from one side of the laser pressurization head module to carry the bonding object to the other side thereof after passing through a reflow process of the laser pressurized head module.

An exposure system that performs scanning exposure of a semiconductor substrate by irradiating a reticle with a pulse laser beam includes a laser apparatus configured to emit a pulse laser beam, an illumination optical system through which the pulse laser beam is guided to the reticle, a reticle stage, and a processor configured to control emission of the pulse laser beam from the laser apparatus and movement of the reticle by the reticle stage. The reticle includes a region in which multiple kinds of patterns are arranged in a mixed manner in a scanning width direction orthogonal to a scanning direction of the scanning exposure. The processor instructs the laser apparatus about a target wavelength such that the laser apparatus emits the pulse laser beam of a wavelength with which dispersion of best focus positions corresponding to respective patterns of the multiple kinds of patterns is minimum.

A method for laser cutting a workpiece includes the steps of guiding a laser beam over the workpiece in a cutting direction so as to produce a cutting kerf with two cutting flanks and melting material on the workpiece at a cutting front that extends between the cutting flanks and adjoins at least one of the cutting flanks at an angle. The laser beam has a non-circular cross section and, at a front of the laser beam in the cutting direction, a continuous cutting beam contour corresponding to the cutting front.

Provided are a variable pulse width flat-top laser device and an operation method therefor. A variable pulse width flat-top laser device includes a light source unit including first and second laser light sources driven at different times to respectively emit pulse-type first and second laser beams, a beam shaping unit configured to shape the first and second laser beams emitted from the light source unit into flat-top laser beams, a combination/split unit located between the light source unit and the beam shaping unit, and including a first beam combination/split unit configured to combine optical paths of the first and second laser beams and split a combined optical path into at least two optical paths so that the split at least two optical paths are directed to different regions of an incident surface of the beam shaping unit, and an imaging optical system configured to time-sequentially overlay the flat-top laser beams shaped by the beam shaping unit on a target object to form an image.

A welding or cladding apparatus in which one or more energy beam emitters are used to generate a wide beam spot transverse to a welding or cladding path, and one or more wide feeders feed wire to the spot to create a wide welding or cladding puddle.

In one aspect, a method of processing a semiconductor substrate is disclosed, which comprises incorporating at least one dopant in a semiconductor substrate so as to generate a doped polyphase surface layer on a light-trapping surface, and optically annealing the surface layer via exposure to a plurality of laser pulses having a pulsewidth in a range of about 1 nanosecond to about 50 nanoseconds so as to enhance crystallinity of said doped surface layer while maintaining high above-bandgap, and in many embodiments sub-bandgap optical absorptance.

A thermal processing apparatus and method in which a first laser source, for example, a CO.sub.2 emitting at 10.6 μm is focused onto a silicon wafer as a line beam and a second laser source, for example, a GaAs laser bar emitting at 808 nm is focused onto the wafer as a larger beam surrounding the line beam. The two beams are scanned in synchronism in the direction of the narrow dimension of the line beam to create a narrow heating pulse from the line beam when activated by the larger beam. The energy of GaAs radiation is greater than the silicon bandgap energy and creates free carriers. The energy of the CO.sub.2 radiation is less than the silicon bandgap energy so silicon is otherwise transparent to it, but the long wavelength radiation is absorbed by the free carriers.