Particle-free Wafer Cleaning
Wafer cleaning is by far the most frequent manufacturing step in the semiconductor industry as insufficient cleaning can have fatal consequences. Small particles or chemical residues lead to yield losses or the complete loss of a wafer or even batch.
There are two reasons why the wafers must be cleaned so often: Firstly the wafers come into contact with different chemicals (e.g. etching liquids, wetting agents or photo resists) with every process step that afterwards must be completely removed from the wafer. Secondly the wafers are mechanically moved for each process step to return them to the different processing, control and measurement equipment. Each of these movements is unavoidably connected with mechanical friction, which produces particles that can then get onto the wafers.
Employees and the processes themselves can also produce particles. In order for acids and other chemicals to also be supplied without any particles within the cleaning process, there are higher requirements for the products used. The products used by emtechnik are therefore produced in a controlled environment such as in a clean room according to ISO 14644-1 class 5 (since 2018 also class 7). For example this means that our flare connectors comply with the highest standards for purity and cleanliness.