Quartz and SiC Cleaning
Benefits
- Decontamination of surfaces
- Usability of parts under cleanroom conditions
- Surface profiling for contaminant adhesion
- Increased equipment availability
Properties
- Conductivity of DI water
- Mechanical particles monitored by LPC
- Surface and material contamination measurements by analytical means
Similar to precision cleaning, quartz and SiC cleaning provide cleaning in accordance with very stringent standards and with very low tolerance for left-over microscopic particles or other contaminants.
Quartz and SiC parts are used in specific industries. In particular, these type of parts are installed in diffusion furnaces and in early manufacturing steps of semiconductor chips. During the manufacturing processes inside the furnaces, the quartz and SiC parts hold the wafers and are gradually covered with deposits such as polysilicon, nitride or oxides of silicon. After a certain usage time, they need to be periodically decontaminated.
The decontamination process and precision cleaning can be achieved by chemical cleaning. This allows deposits to be selectively removed from the quartz and SiC components. This is done by means of immersion or spray-cleaning technologies in combination with various rinsing steps.
Careful drying is also managed. All of the process steps are being carried out in a clean-air-controlled environment (clean room).
The specificity of this activity lies in the mandatory segregation of these cleaning steps. The quartz and SiC components cannot be mixed with other components – metallic contaminants particularly have a negative impact on the processing steps once the quartz and SiC parts are reinstalled in their manufacturing equipment