GAS CHEMICAL SAFETY

Reported Applications for Halogen Containing Plasma Etching 

Many of these materials are acutely toxic upon inhalation and very corrosive to the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes. Inhalation may also result in insidious adverse effects such as delayed respiratory impairment. In other words, exposure to these materials could result in impairment many hours after inhalation which mandates that any persoimel that inhale these materials be evaluated by a qualified physician. 

There have been many comprehensive assessments of the health hazards associated with various plasma processing operations. IBM personnel have analyzed debris from vacuum pumps and reaction chambers, pump oil contaminants, collected air samples to assess inhalation exposure, and analyzed effluent emitted into exhausts.[i ] Their data confirm that a myriad of potentially hazardous materials may be found in any part of the equipment potentially contacted by process gases. Some of the contaminants they found are listed in Table 2. 

Yellow polymer in reaction chamber of aluminum etcher 

In the IBM tests, measurements of inorganics including HCl, HF, HCN, CHCl and organics were generally less than 10% of the Threshold Limit Value (TLV). No personnel exposures were found to exceed 20% of theTLVorTLV-Ceiling. 

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