Microelectronic corrosion contamination

This method is a workhorse technique for surface science experiments in UHV Typically it is used to determine surface, cleanliness prior to the main experiment. The usual contaminants are carbon and oxygen. It is also used in metallurgy, microelectronics and corrosion science. 

Regardless of the type of device or the offending corrosion mechanism, corrosion-induced degradation involves interactions with the environment. The critical factors that must always exist are a susceptible metallization, the presence of moisture, and some type of contaminating ionic species. This subsection describes some of the aspects of the latter two fectors common to corrosion of all microelectronic devices. 

Leygraf, in the chapter on atmospheric corrosion, discusses the environmental differences between indoor and outdoor exposure conditions and why these differences are important to corrosion of electronics. Although the service environments for electronic devices are typically less severe than for many other types of equipment, industrial atmospheres do contain harmful oxidizing (e.g., Clj, SO2, NO ) and halide-containing (e.g., NaCl) species that can diffuse or migrate to microelectronic metallization, especially over an extended service life. Because of the importance of contamination control, techniques to quantify microscopic levels on have been developed [30,44],... 

---