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New Product: K-Patents offers real-time chemical concentration monitoring
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Product Briefing Outline: K-Patents launched the
Semicon Process Refractometer PR-23-MS real-time chemical concentration
monitoring system. PR-23-MS provides a continuous 4-20 mA or digital
measurement signal, which offers many possibilities for real-time
monitoring and process control. It is physically small and easy to
install in the bulk chemicals supply and distribution, and in
point-of-use chemical blending, mixing, dilution and spiking
applications.
Problem: Low and high concentration alarms can be
configured to prevent wrong liquids reaching the fabrication process
and thus costly production problems and equipment damage can be
avoided. The rationale is that changes in chemical quality can occur
during in-house handling and storage. Factors such as human error in
container handling and equipment failure at the distribution point are
now also taken into account.
Solution: The
PR-23-MS technology also assists in various wet etch, wafer cleaning
and planarization operations where it helps to increase the number of
wafers pass-in, saves chemical consumption and improves environmental
performance of chemicals waste management. The company claims that
typical polymer removal chemical savings in post-etch wafer cleaning
can be up to 20 percent and the increase in wafers pass-in up to 40
percent. The PR-23-MS is mounted directly in-line. The workers need not
tap off lab samples and analyze hazardous chemicals in the laboratory.
Applications: Typical monitored liquids are KOH (Potassium hydroxide), H2SO4 (Sulphuric acid), HF (Hydrofluoric acid), NH4OH
(Ammonium hydroxide), HCl (Hydrochloric acid), IPA (Isopropyl alcohol),
Ethylene glycol, Acetone and others. Chemical mixtures, for example
STD-1, SC-2, RCA-1, RCA-2, SPM, DHF, etc., are also measured.
Platform:
PR-23-MS has a built-in flow cell designed to keep all metal and
corroding parts from coming into contact with the process liquid. All
the wetted parts are made of non-metallic materials, either PTFE or PFA
(Teflon) or PVDF (Kynar). The prism material is spinel or sapphire.
Availability: July 2007 onwards.
