• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.690-696
• /
• 2010

Abatement of perfluorocompounds (PFCs) used in semiconductor and display industries has received an attention due to the increasingly stricter regulation on their emission. In order to meet this circumstance, we have developed a radio frequency (RF) driven plasma reactor with multiple annular shaped electrodes, characterized by an easy installment between a processing chamber and a vacuum pump. Abatement experiment has been performed with respect to $CF_4$, a representative PFCs widely used in the plasma etching process, by varying the power, $CF_4$ and $O_2$ flow rates, $CF_4$ concentration, and pressure. The influence of these variables on the $CF_4$ abatement was analyzed and discussed in terms of the destruction & removal efficiency (DRE), measured with a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer. The results revealed that DRE was enhanced with the increase in the discharge power and pressure, but dropped with the $CF_4$ flow rate and concentration. The addition of small quantity of $O_2$ lead to the improvement of DRE, which, however, leveled off and then decreased with $O_2$ flow rate.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.10-17
• /
• 2018

POU (point of use) scrubbers were applied for the treatment of waste gases including PFCs (perfluorocompounds) exhausted from the CVD (chemical vapor deposition), etching, and cleaning processes of semiconductor and display manufacturing plant. The GWP (global warming potential) and atmosphere lifetime of PFCs are known to be a few thousands higher than that of $CO_2$, and extremely high temperature more than 3,000 K is required to thermally decompose PFCs. Therefore, POU gas scrubbers based on the thermal plasma technology were developed for the effective control of PFCs and industrial application of the technology. The thermal plasma technology encompasses the generation of powerful plasma via the optimization of the plasma torch, a highly stable power supply, and the matching technique between two components. In addition, the effective mixture of the high temperature plasma and waste gases was also necessary for the highly efficient abatement of PFCs. The purpose of this paper was to provide not only a useful technical information of the post-treatment process for the waste gas scrubbing but also a short perspective on R&D of POU plasma gas scrubbers.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.181-187
• /
• 2017

The perfluorocompounds (PFCs) emitted from the semiconductor and display manufacture is treated by abatement systems which use various technologies, such as combustion, thermal, plasma, catalyst. However, it is required that the system should overcome their drawbacks with excess energy consumption and low removal efficiency. The new technology using combination of pressure swing adsorption and excess enthalpy combustion for the reduction of PFCs emissions were developed and analyzed its characteristics. PFCs concentration ratio and PFCs loss factor were calculated from measuring concentration of PFCs at the calculated by comparing concentration of PFCs at the combustor's inlet and outlet. There were performance evaluations with various gas flow for comparing energy consumption and removal efficiency with existing equipments. The concentration ratio and the loss factor of PFCs were 1.65, 8.2%, respectively, when the total gas flow of the pressure swing absorption (PSA) inlet was 204 liter per minute (LPM) and $CF_4$ concentration was 1412 ppm. In comparison with existing system at constant condition, $CF_4$ removal efficiency for a porous media combustion (PMC) showed the improvement more than 16% and the consumed energy was also reduced up to approximately 41%. Then, the total gas flow introduced into PMC and $CF_4$ concentration were 91-LPM and 2335 ppm, respectively, and the destruction and removal efficiency of $CF_4$ was about 96% at 19-LPM $CH_4$, and 40-LPM $O_2$.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.85-93
• /
• 2010

$CF_4$ removal characteristics were investigated using an elongated arc reactor. The advantage of the elongated arc reactor includes direct use of treated gas as plasma operating gas and the enhancement of the removal reaction by using a thermo-chemistry and a plasma induced chemistry at the same time. Geometrical configurations, such as the length of the reactor and the shape of a throat, were tested to get an optimized removal efficiency with low power consumption. As results, over 95% of $CF_4$ removal was obtained with 300 lpm of total flowrate for various $CF_4$ concentration (0.1~1%). Corresponding specific energy density (SED), which means required electrical energy to treat the unit volume of treated gas, is about 3.5 kJ/L, The present technique can be applied to real applications by satisfying three major concerns, those are the high flowrate of treated gas, high removal efficiency (> 95%), and low power consumption (< 10 kJ/L).