BOC and MIS in wafer deal

BOC Edwards has announced an alliance with Micell Integrated Systems (MIS) to further develop and commercialise technology for dense and supercritical CO₂ semiconductor wafer processing.

"BOC Edwards and MIS are jointly developing technology that will allow BOC Edwards to supply high-purity CO₂ and chemistry, along with equipment subsystems to support the delivery of these materials to wafer processing tools," said Chris Case, BOC Edwards chief technical officer. Additional systems for CO₂ recycling and waste recovery are an integral part of the delivery technology. "The semiconductor industry is evaluating and rapidly adopting new wafer cleaning technology using supercritical CO₂", said Jim McClain, President of MIS. "The alliance with BOC Edwards is extremely powerful and has enabled us to go to market with the only integrated solution for CO₂-based processes." The initial applications for supercritical CO₂ include wafer drying, cleaning and photoresist stripping processes. Because of supercritical CO₂'s unique physical and chemical properties, the fluid can penetrate the fine features of sub-90nm structures, perform the required cleaning or drying function, and vacate the features in preparation for the next process step.