As an alternative to classical thermal heating, laser annealing (LA) was recently demonstrated to be suitable for the electrical activation of ion-implanted dopants in SiC. In this work, we demonstrate the possibility to anneal the Al+ ion-implantation induced damage into 4H-SiC by solid phase laser processing using a XeCl excimer source of 200 ns-pulse duration. The electrical activation of the Al dopant was confirmed. by I-V measurements performed directly on mesa pn junction diodes. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.