Semiconductor Manufacturing

Throughout the semiconductor industry's history, DuPont™ Teflon® has delivered the performance needed to become the material of choice for tools, equipment and systems that come in contact with aggressively reactive, high-purity fluids.

Teflon® has earned this position by:

• Maximizing Yields by Reducing Contamination
  Teflon® PTFE and PFA are non-reactive with virtually all chemicals. Teflon® PFA HP has a chemical structure providing the lowest levels of extractables to protect chip yields.
  
  
• Maximizing Design Freedom
  Teflon® is used to make a broad range of fluid handling components, process wafer carriers, and vessel and container linings.
  
  
• Minimizing Cost of Ownership
  Tools and components made from Teflon® perform well even after long exposure to highly reactive chemicals. Often, they can be used with successive generations of fluids for circuit manufacturing.

Teflon® is used in high-purity bulk chemical systems, wet etching, stripping, cleaning, chemical mechanical planarization, analytical, and high-purity chemical manufacturing.

Bulk chemical distribution (BCD) reduces costs for delivering chemicals from large bulk containers to use points. Systems often include automated equipment for diluting and dispensing chemicals. Teflon® is widely used in BCD components to help protect fluid purity.

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In wet processing, wafers are cleaned and etched, and then cleaned of photoresist and residuals from the etching process. Components of Teflon® are used in tools and fluid delivery systems to help prevent contamination.

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Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) levels wafer surfaces before vapor deposition and subsequent processing steps. The working fluid is a slurry of fine abrasive particles, chemicals and water. In CMP, components made with Teflon® help guard against contamination of process fluids and slurries that come in contact with wafers.

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Analyses of process fluid composition, determinations of particulate and bacterial levels, and other laboratory procedures are critical steps in manufacturing semiconductors. Fluid chemistries must be analyzed and kept on specification to maintain yields. For accuracy and repeatability, labware and equipment must not react with or contaminate the samples being studied or the reagents.

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High-purity chemicals and solvents used in the semiconductor industry are manufactured using equipment that resists corrosion and leaching that can introduce contaminates. It is often more cost effective to make products that are inherently pure rather than trying to achieve high purity through refining steps. To guard purity, the chemical process industry (CPI) uses the same types of corrosion-resistant fluid handling components as the semiconductor industry.

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