Wednesday 28 September 2011

IBM announces the invention of new compounds for semiconductor manufacturing that offer improved environmental benefits

      The invention is a new type of photo-acid generator (PAG) for the production of semiconductors using 193nm lithography. The photo-acid generator is one of several components of a system of chemicals used in the photolithography process to transfer circuit patterns onto semiconductor wafers. It helps to amplify and clarify the circuit image, which has become a critical and challenging step in semiconductor manufacturing as chip dimensions continue to shrink with each technology generation.

      This new suite of compounds is the industry's first fluorine-free PAG for 193nm lithography chip processing. The compounds used for this process in the industry today are typically flourine-based perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Research has showed that these compounds can persist in the environment and gradually increase in concentration over time. Since IBM's new compounds are fluorine-free, they can offer an environmentally preferable solution for the semiconductor photolithography process.
     IBM's solution is an example of "green chemistry" in action - applying molecular design to invent new more environmentally benign compounds. IBM researchers studied how the molecular structure of existing PFOS- and PFOA-based chemicals functioned as photo-acid generators. They designed an array of alternate chemical structures that would provide the desired performance without the use of fluorine, and then synthesized and tested the newly-formed compounds.
posted by Mirza Ahsan Baig
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/news/fluorinefree_pag_2010.shtml
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