A comparative study of a front opening unified pod (FOUP) moisture removal efficiency with different purging gases

Airborne molecular contamination (AMC) is one of the main causes of chip products defects during manufacturing. The downward moist air flow originated from the fan filter unit (FFU) inside the mini-environment (ME) can penetrate into the front opening unified pod (FOUP) and cause wafer defects. Purg...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Thermofluids 2022-11, Vol.16, p.100198, Article 100198
Main Authors: Benalcazar, David, Lin, Tee, Hu, Ming-Hsuan, Zargar, Omid Ali, Lin, Shao-Yu, Shih, Yang-Cheng, Leggett, Graham
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
AMCs
CDA purge
CFD
FOUP, ME
LES
Nitrogen purge
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Airborne molecular contamination (AMC) is one of the main causes of chip products defects during manufacturing. The downward moist air flow originated from the fan filter unit (FFU) inside the mini-environment (ME) can penetrate into the front opening unified pod (FOUP) and cause wafer defects. Purging nitrogen or clean dry air (CDA) are two common techniques used to minimize the relative humidity (RH) level inside the FOUP. This computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study compares purge performance of CDA and nitrogen when the FOUP door is open. The RH contours and moist air stream line were simulated inside the FOUP during purge. The FFU velocity, purging devices flow rate and temperature are kept constant during the simulation. An innovative large eddy simulation (LES) model was performed with the assistance of a small mesh size to simulate accurately the flow behavior inside the FOUP and ME. The results show that purging the FOUP with either CDA or nitrogen can significantly decrease the RH level to below 5% (RH 
ISSN:2666-2027
2666-2027
DOI:10.1016/j.ijft.2022.100198