Advances in microelectronics led to the development of rapid thermal processing (RTP). Accurate in situ temperature measurement and control are crucial for RTP furnaces to be largely accepted in the fabrication of semiconductor chips. This paper describes an effective emissivity model based on the Monte Carlo method to facilitate radiometric temperature measurements. The results showed that for non-diffuse wafers the "true" effective emissivity (defined in this paper) should be used, instead of the hemispherical effective emissivity, to correct thermometer readings. The geometric parameters and surface radiative properties can significantly influence the effective emissivity. The numerical aperture of the lightpipe radiation thermometer and the wafer-to-shield distance may be optimized to improve the measurement accuracy. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.