Analyses of particulate contaminants in semiconductor processing fluids

Particle contamination control is a critical issue for the semiconductor industry. In the near future, this industry will be concerned with particles as small as 0.01 ;Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) provides excellent spatial resolution and yields structural and compositional information. It is rarely used, however, due to the difficulty of sample preparation.;The goals of this research are to promote the use of TEM as an ultrafine particle analysis tool by developing new sample preparation methods and to exploit the new TEM techniques for analysis of particles in semiconductor processing fluids.;A TEM methodology for the analysis of particulate contaminants in fluids with an elemental detectability limit as low as 0.1 part per trillion (ppt), and a particle concentration detectability limit as low as 1 particle/ml for particles greater than 0.2 ;HF samples from three manufacturers were examined. For HF (B), the maximum particle concentration was ;For ;For DI water, spherical and dendritic particles ;Contaminants on an electronic device surface were also analyzed. Clusters of small particles were observed. They were determined to be a mixture of aluminum oxides and aluminum silicates.