It is a common sense that water is an old offender crashing our dream of achieving a good vacuum in an early time. Various techniques for accelerating the removal of water have been developed and utilized. However, we generally are not skilled in treating the water pumping in a physically proper manner. We are rather used to handle the situation of the water pumping just like considering a conventional air pumping. Under such an erroneous approach, we cannot help making an overestimation on the pumping capability of our vacuum system, and it leads to a big mismatch between the real operation timing and the planned process schedule. In this article, some main points concerning with the subject that a vacuum pumping is really a water pumping will be discussed.

A variety of metal vacuum systems displays the celebrated 1/t pressure, namely, power-law dependence on time t, with the exponent close to unity, as to the origin of which there has been long-standing controversy. Here we propose a chemisorption model for water adsorbates, based on the argument for 2D fermion behavior of water adsorbed on a metal surface, and obtain analytically the power-law behavior of pressure with an exponent unity. Further, the model predicts that the pressure should depend on the temperature T according to $T^{1.5}$, which is indeed confirmed by our experiment.

This article introduces the basic concepts of various soft X-ray spectroscopies in the study of surface and interface electronic structures. Especially, recent results of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy experiments on organic/inorganic thin films and a lead-free solder alloys will be discussed. Soft X-ray spectroscopies to understand the chemical and electrical properties would be of broad interest in the vacuum science communities.

The new materials such as graphene and other nano scale structured materials are attracting great attention due to its expandability for the future electronic devices. In this presentation, a variety of analysis techniques will be introduced for the latest new material applications such as graphene and organic materials with number of metals. The basic properties of next generation device should be carefully analyzed without being exposed to ambient surrounding since the physical and chemical properties of new material or interface states are easily and drastically changed by ambient condition. With the combination of the fabrication process and precise analysis instruments, it is expected to set the facilities supporting the nanotechnology industry and other research groups. This system will give strong support nanotechnology and other complex science with qualified data and information on basic knowledge on the new-forthcoming materials for the future.