Identifying organic contaminants in ultrapure water at sub-parts-per-billion levels

摘要

Organic contamination deposited on wafer surfaces from ultrapure water (UPW) can seriously undermine wafer-cleaning efficiency, which leads to nonuniform etching. In addition, carbon-rich hydrophobic wafer surfaces are known to affect gate-oxide growth rates and reliability. In the semiconductor and disk-drive industries, organic compounds in UPW are usually monitored as total oxidizable carbon (TOC) using instruments that provide excellent sensitivity but do not identify the contaminants.