AMC Monitoring

Challenge

Airborne Molecular Contamination (AMC) is a general term for existing molecular contaminations in clean room environments. These compounds belong to very different groups with very different mechanisms of damage.

AMC is a concern for any high technology manufacturing process, especially in the microelectronic industry and is getting more and more in the focus of interest. AM-contaminations may cause adverse effects on production tools and consequently increase costs for high-tech companies. These airborne contaminants cause expensive, yield-reducing and quality degrading problems such as film and trace corrosion, T-topping, bridging and unwanted doping of silicon.

Contaminations as chemical films or layers, sometimes as thin as a single molecule can alter electrical, optical, and physical properties of the product surfaces. In addition to damaging the final product, these chemical films can damage or impair costly optics and other tools used in the manufacturing process.

Monitoring of AMCs with an Ion Mobility Spectrometer (IMS) can help to reduce or eliminate the costs associated with this contamination. This includes monitoring of acids, bases, ammonia and organic compounds in a continuously operating gas analyzer.

Solution

IMS is an atmospheric pressure, time of flight detection technique. The sensitivity, selectivity, and speed of response make the technique superior in many aspects compared to other monitoring methods. The industry- proof spectrometer design allows using these advantages in 24/7 stand- alone operation. IUT Technologies‘ IMS units are designed for long term, continuous measurements with little or no maintenance and few consumables. The electronics are completely solid-state without moving parts or optics to require alignment.

IUT‘s IMS-Analyzer is capable of detecting and quantifying substances like these in the required ppb concentration level. The coupling of a gas chromatographic pre- separation prior to the high sensitive IMS technology provides an analyzing performance, where compounds like AMC‘s can be measured and quantified with outstanding sensitivity, repeatability within cycle times of minutes.

IUT is building and calibrating each divice to the specific needs of the customer. Therefore it is possible to modify an existing application or develop a new application to further strengthen the process and reduce failures in production, e.g. the measurement of Bortrichloride or Botrifluoride which are also often used at semiconductor production.