The influence of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and millisecond annealing (MSA) peak temperature fluctuations, due to pattern effects, on Schottky contact resistances and the electrical properties of 6-T SRAM cells is studied in this work. TCAD simulations of 32 nm gate length single gate fully depleted silicon on insulator MOSFETs were carried out. The contact regions of the n(+)/p(+) layers of a 6-T SRAM cell layout were separately handled in 3D TCAD simulations to calculate the dependence of contact resistances on RTA and MSA peak temperatures. Compact models of the 32 nm gate length transistors were extracted and used in circuit simulations. Finally, the impact of RTA and MSA peak temperature fluctuations on the electrical performance of single devices and 6-T SRAM cells were studied by extended SPICE simulations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.