The reduction of complementary metal oxide semiconductor dimensions through transistor scaling is in part limited by the Si02 dielectric layer thickness. Among the materials evaluated as alternative gate dielectrics one of the leading candidate is La2O3 due to its high permittivity and thermodynamic stability. However, during device processing, thermal annealing can promote deleterious interactions between the silicon substrate and the high-k dielectric degrading the desired oxide insulating properties. The possibility to grow poly-SiGe on top of La2O3//Si by laser assisted techniques therefore seems to be very attractive. Low thermal budget techniques such as pulsed laser deposition and crystallization can be a good choice to reduce possible interface modifications due to their localized and limited thermal effect. In this work the laser annealing by ArF excimer laser irradiation of amorphous SiGe grown on La2O3HSi has been analysed theoretically by a numerical model based on the heat conduction differential equation with the aim to control possible modifications at the La2O3HSi interface. Simulations have been carried out using different laser energy densities (0.26-0.58 J/cm(2)), different La2O3 film thickness (5-20 nm) and a 50 nm, 30 nm thick amorphous SiGe layer. The temperature distributions have been studied in both the two films and substrate, the melting depth and interfaces temperature have been evaluated. The fluences ranges for which the interfaces start to melt have been calculated for the different configurations. Thermal profiles and interfaces melting point have shown to be sensitive to the thickness of the La2O3 film, the thicker the film the lower the temperature at Si interface. Good agreement between theoretical and preliminary experimental data has been found. According to our results the oxide degradation is not expected during the laser crystallization of amorphous Si0.7Ge0.3 for the examined ranges of film thickness and fluences. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.