ECO chip

Environment-Friendly Chip Designs in the Works



'We want to advance the technologies of fabrication and minimize their environmental impacts,' Arizona assistant professor Anthony Muscat told NewsFactor. 'We also want to train engineering students so that they understand the environment is an important constraint and to consider it in their designs.'



Efforts to "save the planet" are being undertaken on a variety of fronts, including the microchip industry, which is getting help from a research center dedicated to developing new, environmentally friendly ways to manufacture the processors that drive everything from computers to coffee makers and car engines.

"Instead of focusing on remediation," Muscat added, "we want to invent new processes that do the same things but make large leaps in changing existing processes."

Clean Sweep

Muscat's current focus is on the physical properties of the interfaces where chip materials meet. He also is devising improved technologies for cleaning the chip surfaces during production. "We want to learn more about the fundamental physics and chemical processes of the chip-making process," Muscat said.

Along those lines, one of his projects is a gas-phase process that would largely replace the use of liquids for chip cleaning. The industry has developed a sophisticated cleaning methodology, said Muscat.

Microchips are transferred to and from vacuum chambers as they are being made because they must be cleaned using liquids between each step, he explained. At the same time, the etching and deposition steps use gases to remove impurities.

Water Watching
"With all-gas-phase processing we can expedite the cleaning process, because you don't have to remove the chip from the reactor, and it is not exposed to air," said Muscat.

That approach not only helps avoid contamination, but also uses a fraction of the water required for liquid rinses, he said.

For the process, Muscat is experimenting with supercritical carbon dioxide to clean chip surfaces because it has a density between gas and liquid and has the dissolving and diffusing properties of each.

One Wafer

Advances in chip cleaning are small but important steps toward conserving resources. In fact, Muscat pointed out, 25 percent of the work that goes into making a chip involves cleaning.

"Also, the industry is moving from 8-inch to 12-inch wafer size, which involves single-wafer cleaning and more liquid. The gas-phase process is designed for doing one wafer at a time," Muscat said.
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