Field investigations and dynamic measurements of process activity induced VOCs inside a semiconductor cleanroom

• Define target VOCs and concentration level inside a semiconductor cleanroom using canister/GC–MS.
• Test separation and column stationary phase selection for μGC-PID.
• Real time concentration data for compound correlation and indoor activity evaluation.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) inside a semiconductor cleanroom and the concentration changes with indoor process activities are investigated. The species of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were identified using canister/GC–MS analyses. The persistent existing VOCs inside the cleanroom of a field study included acetone, isopropanol, n-hexane, toluene, m-xylene, and anisole. A micro gas chromatograph (μGC) equipped with a high-ratio mini-preconcentrator and a photo-ionization detector was tuned for the onsite analysis for these target VOCs. As the use of isopropyl alcohol and acetone occurred at different times, the concentrations of these two chemicals surged to hundreds of ppb and were recorded by the μGC in a real-time manner. In addition, the time-dependent concentration of n-hexane was found to be highly correlated to isopropanol. The rapid establishment of a large amount of data for individual VOCs enabled the observation of activity related changes for these chemicals inside a cleanroom.

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