Ozone in the United States of America -- State-Of-The-Art

Applications for ozone in the United States have evolved through a lengthy maturation process, which began with drinking water treatment (taste/odor/color removal) in the early 1900s, and grew slowly until acceleration began in the mid-1980s. Although deodorization became a stable market in the 1960s-1970s, these applications were small, for the most part. One of the largest uses for ozone is oxidation of process chemicals in the chemical industry, which began in the USA about the 1940s, and subsequently has spread worldwide. Today, thanks primarily to environmental regulatory pressures which began to impact ozone in the mid-1980s, ozone now is used increasingly in the USA for drinking water treatment and for some municipal and industrial wastewater applications. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recognized the growing importance of ozone (> 200 drinking water plants use ozone today), and has appointed IOA representatives to two of its regulatory development committees as stakeholders. Several U.S. cities have installed or are installing wastewater treatment processes for potable reuse purposes, which include the use of ozone. Three full-scale U.S. pulp bleaching plants use tons/day quantities of ozone. Smaller applications for ozone include water treatment for cooling tower waters (biofouling control), swimming pools and spas, marine aquaria, bottled water disinfection and maintenance of high purity waters in the pharmaceuticals and electronics industries. A new application for ozone is in commercial laundries to reduce energy costs and replace chemicals. In mid-1997, a public declaration was made by an expert panel that ozone is Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) for contact with foods. This declaration opens the door for ozone to be used in U.S. food processing industries. U.S. research scientists and engineers are at the forefront in studies which define the technical aspects of ozone technologies in a variety of applications employing advanced oxidation, including the treatment of hazardous wastes, groundwater remediation, and process water recovery and reuse in the semi-conductor industry.     

Electron Mobility in Tris（8—Hydroxyquinolinolato）Aluminum Thin Film Based on Silicium^①②

We have measured the mobilities of electrons in thin,vapor-deposited films of tris(8-hydroxyquinolinolato) aluminum(Alq 3) based on silicium using a time-of-flight(TOF) technique.The drift of electron mobility is strongly electric field and temperature dependent.At room temperature and an electric field of 2×10 5 V·cm -1 ,the effective mobility of electron is 1.0×10 -5 cm 2·V -1 ·s -1 for 200 nm thick sample.     

Low temperature synthesis of ZnSe nanoparticles

Synthesis of thioglycerol capped zinc selenide nanoparticles with a relatively narrow size distribution by a simple and inexpensive low temperature (~ 80 °C) wet chemical method is reported here. Main advantage of this method is the use of non-toxic precursors. The size of the nanoparticles can be varied easily by changing the concentration of the capping agent. The extracted nanoparticles remain stable under normal atmospheric conditions and can be redispersed in suitable solvents. The sharp absorption features obtained in the UV-Visible absorption spectra reveal the formation of monodispersed ZnSe nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, UV-Visible absorption spectroscopy, photoluminescence and transmission electron microscopy.     

Influence of yttrium as a minority alloying element on the corrosion behavior in Fe-based bulk metallic glasses

The role of yttrium in corrosion behavior in an HCl solution was studied systematically by comparing bulk FeCrMoCB metallic glasses with and without yttrium. The corrosion resistance was very sensitive to minor yttrium addition. The material exhibits a detrimental effect on corrosion resistance at 0.5 at.% yttrium addition while a beneficial effect at more yttrium additions. Such effects are argued to be associated with variations of the semiconductor properties of passive film (i.e. defects concentration and band structure of passive film), induced by minority yttrium alloying element doping. It was shown that there exhibits a bi-layer structure of passive film on Fe-based metallic glasses. The outer layer with high valence cations is responsible for the dissolution behavior of the passive film, whereas the inner layer with doped oxides connects with the semiconductor properties. This result presents us an important hint that the corrosion resistance of metallic glasses can be improved by elaborately tailoring the defect structure of passive film via proper additions of minor alloying elements.     

Power consumption benchmark for a semiconductor cleanroom facility system

Benchmarking is an important step in implementing energy conservation in a semiconductor fabrication plant (hereafter referred to as “fab”). A semiconductor cleanroom facility system is complicated, usually comprised of several sub-systems, such as a chilled water system, a make-up system, an exhaust air system, a compressed air system, a process cooling water (PCW) system, a nitrogen system, a vacuum system, and an ultra-pure water (UPW) system. It is a daunting task to allocate energy consumption and determine an optimum benchmark. This study aims to establish the energy benchmark of a typical 8-in. DRAM semiconductor fab through field measurement data. Results of the measured energy consumption index were: chilled water system (including chiller, chilled water pump and cooling tower): 0.257 kW/kW (=0.9 kW/RT) in summer and 0.245 kW/kW (=0.86 kW/RT) in winter air recirculation air system: 0.00018 kWh/m³ make-up air system: 0.0042 kWh/m³ general exhaust air system: 0.0007 kWh/m³ solvent exhaust air system: 0.0021 kWh/m³ acid exhaust air system: 0.0009 kWh/m³ alkaline exhaust air system: 0.0025 kWh/m³ nitrogen system: 0.2209 kWh/m³ compressed dry air system: 0.2250 kWh/m³ process cooling water system: 1.3535 kWh/m³ and ultra-pure water system: 9.5502 kWh/m³. These data can be used to assess the efficiency of different energy-saving schemes and as a good reference for factory authorities. The PCW system's status before and after implementing energy conservation is discussed.     

Kinetic Inductance Phonon Sensors for the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search Experiment

An important challenge faced by phonon-mediated detectors for the next generation of dark matter detectors (>100 kg) is to instrument large target mass at low cost, while maintaining the large background suppression offered by the combination of phonons and ionization (or scintillation) measurement. Kinetic inductance phonon sensors, operating far below the superconducting transition temperature, offer an interesting solution to this scaling problem. They do not critically depend on the uniformity of T _c and their resonant-cavity readout is easy to multiplex. We are studying a microstrip (two parallel planes) transmission line architecture that may offer the additional advantage of a separation of functions: the main detector is just covered by an unpatterned aluminum film and the number of quasi-particles created in it by athermal phonons are sensed by a second film, which has been independently patterned and is mounted a few microns away from the detector. We present current results on the responsivity and noise of large area (∼33 mm²) microstrip kinetic inductance phonon sensors.      

A multiple criteria decision for trading capacity between two semiconductor fabs

This paper presents a multiple criteria decision approach for trading weekly tool capacity between two semiconductor fabs. Due to the high-cost characteristics of tools, a semiconductor company with multiple fabs (factories) may weekly trade their tool capacities. That is, a lowly utilized workstation in one fab may sell capacity to its highly utilized counterpart in the other fab. Wu and Chang [Wu, M. C., & Chang, W. J. (2007). A short-term capacity trading method for semiconductor fabs with partnership. Expert Systems with Application, 33(2), 476–483] have proposed a method for making weekly trading decisions between two wafer fabs. Compared with no trading, their method could effectively increase the two fabs’ throughput for a longer period such as 8 weeks. However, their trading decision-making is based on a single criterion—number of weekly produced operations, which may still leave a space for improving. We therefore proposed a multiple criteria trading decision approach in order to further increase the two fabs’ throughput. The three decision criteria are: number of operations, number of layers, and number of wafers. This research developed a method to find an optimal weighting vector for the three criteria. The method firstly used NN + GA (neural network + genetic algorithm) to find an optimal trading decision in each week, and then used DOE + RSM (design of experiment + response surface method) to find an optimal weighting vector for a longer period, say 10 weeks. Experiments indicated that the multiple criteria approach indeed outperformed the previous method in terms the fabs’ long-term throughput.     

Ⅲ—Ⅴ族化合物等离子腐蚀

本文评述了Ⅲ-Ⅴ族化合物等离子腐蚀的基本原理,并报导了有关工艺化学的最近进展。最后,概观等离子腐蚀在器件制作中的应用。     

Maximum a posteriori estimation of activation energies that control silicon self-diffusion

Self-diffusion in crystalline silicon is controlled by a network of elementary steps whose activation energies are important to know in a variety of applications in microelectronic fabrication. The present work employs maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation to improve existing values for these activation energies, based on self-diffusion data collected at different values of the loss rates for interstitial atoms to the surface. Parameter sensitivity analysis shows that for high surface loss fluxes, the energy for exchange between an interstitial and the lattice plays the leading role in determining the shape of diffusion profiles. At low surface loss fluxes, the dissociation energy of large-atom clusters plays a more important role. Subsequent MAP analysis provides significantly improved values for these parameters.     

Formation and corrosion of InP/In contacts in hydrochloric acid

Flatband potentials, charge carrier concentrations and their frequency dispersions of p-type and n-type InP in 1.0 M HCl were determined. The cathodic decomposition of InP in this acidic solution is compared with the deposition process of indium from 1.0 M-HCl containing 0.1 M InCl₃. The share of the involved reactions, hydrogen evolution, InP decomposition and indium deposition are investigated. The reaction rates are generally smaller on p-type InP and the reaction speed is much slower but the principal reactions are the same. The kinetics of the indium deposition and dissolution are studied in detail. These reactions are discussed in terms of the preparation of watersplitting photoelectrodes with modified surfaces.