Carbon footprint of PECVD chamber cleaning

Introduction Fluorine and fluorine-containing gases are widely used in semiconductor, flat panel, and recently also in the solar industry to etch silicon, silicon nitride or silicon dioxide, respectively, in gas phase plasma reactors. An especially widespread application is the so called chamber-clean, a process that cleans SiO2 residues from chamber inner surfaces by application of the cited gases. Historically, the nontoxic and noncorrosive CF4, C2F6 and others were used, because of the convenience in flow control and storage. After much discussion about the global warming effects, specific abatements were developed and more reactive gases like C4F8 and NF3 were introduced to allow higher depletion of the gas during application and thus arrive at lower emissions. Subsequently, gases without a GWP, such as ClF3 and F2, were used or introduced to industrial use [1,2]. SF6 has been and is still widely used in the flat panel industry because of its relatively lower price compared to NF3. Recently, ABSTRACT