Polycrystalline silicon thin films deposited via low-pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD) have a rough surface and a resistance which is too high for use within microelectronic devices. However, both of these problems may be overcome by in situ doping of the polycrystalline silicon films with phosphorus by introducing PH3/N-2 and SiH4/N-2 mixtures simultaneously into a LPCVD reactor but, such doping requires a high temperature furnace step (congruent to 950 degrees C) to bring the resistivity down to the required level. In general, prolonged exposure to high temperature is undesirable since it not only reduces the resistivity of the polycrystalline silicon film but also disturbs the existing dopant profiles and alters the structure of the films deposited. This ultimately makes the devices fabricated unreliable, difficult to reproduce and thus a broad device specification in batch production. The solution is to decrease the furnace temperature or reduce the time the devices are kept at high temperature. The latter may be achieved by using a technique known as rapid thermal annealing (RTA). In this paper we examine rapid thermal annealing as a quick method of redistributing the dopants in order to achieve a lower sheet resistance. The results obtained are compared with conventional furnace annealing. It will be shown that rapid thermal annealing is an attractive and often better alternative to conventional annealing.