Significance of process exhaust system on wafer fab operation and its performance improvement

Abstract

The technological advances, in IC manufacturing, imposes stringent conditions on the production environment, cost and time. The challenge to the Fab designer is to develop a facility, which can satisfy these increasing demands. Semiconductor fabrication is an energy-intensive manufacturing process, and recent studies by both SEMATECH and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have identified the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems as the largest electricity consumer. During the process of transforming silicon into tiny and valuable IC chips, these facilities must also process a river of air flowing through the Clean room. This huge volume of air is known throughout the industry as "makeup air", a name derived from the need to replace both clean and contaminated air removed by the exhaust system and maintain the clean room pressure at a positive pressure (in Pascal) more than the atmosphere so that contamination ingress into the clean room is avoided. This dissertation discusses about the exhaust system design that was aimed at providing cost effective solution to meet the requirements and its performance and the improvement that are warranted by the production tools.