Electrolyzed water as an alternative for environmentally-benign semiconductor cleaning chemicals

A present semiconductor cleaning technology is based upon RCA cleaning technology which consumes vast amounts of chemicals and ultra pure water(UPW) and is the high temperature process. Therefore, this technology gives rise to the many environmental issues, and some alternatives such as electrolyzed water(EW) are being studied. In this work, intentionally contaminated Si wafers were cleaned using the electrolyzed water. The electrolyzed water was generated by an electrolysis system which consists of three anode, cathode, and middle chambers. Oxidative water and reductive water were obtained in anode and cathode chambers, respectively. In case of NH4Cl electrolyte, the oxidation-reduction potential and pH for anode water(AW) and cathode water(CW) were measured to be +1050mV and 4.8, and -750mV and 10.0, respectively. AW and CW were deteriorated after electrolyzed, but maintained their characteristics for more than 40 minutes sufficiently enough for cleaning. Their deterioration was correlated with CO2 concentration changes dissolved from air. Contact angles of UPW, AW, and CW on DHF treated Si wafer surfaces were measured to be $65.9^{\circ}$, $66.5^{\circ}$ and $56.8^{\circ}$, respectively, which characterizes clearly the eletrolyzed water. To analyze the amount of metallic impurities on Si wafer surface, ICP-MS was introduced. It was known that AW was effective for Cu removal, while CW was more effective for Fe removal. To analyze the number of particles on Si wafer surfaces, Tencor 6220 were introduced. The particle distributions after various particle removal processes maintained the same pattern. In this work, RCA consumed about $9{\ell}$ chemicals, while EW did only $400m{\ell}$ HCl electrolyte or $600m{\ell}$ NH4Cl electrolyte. It was hence concluded that EW cleaning technology would be very effective for promoting environment, safety, and health(ESH) issues in the next generation semiconductor manufacturing.