News Article
Eliminating waste gases without fuel
A new system developed by DAS Environmental Expert, safely and reliably abates dangerous waste gases from compound semiconductor manufacturing processes including MOCVD
German firm DAS Environmental Expert is now offering customers a new system for waste gas abatement. SPRUCE is a waste gas abatement system that operates entirely without fuel gas.
SPRUCE waste gas abatement system
“The new system closes a gap in our portfolio”, says Guy Davies, Director of Business Unit Gas Abatement at Dresden based DAS Environmental Expert.
“We noticed that the demand for such systems is very high. There are semiconductor fabs that basically want to avoid using fuel gas altogether. In addition, it is also easier to retrofit existing fabs with abatement equipment, if one can do so without installing a fuel gas feeding system. This is a big market and we are now offering the right product.”
SPRUCE was specifically designed for the waste gas abatement of CVD processes in the semiconductor industry. Most of the time, the gases used in these processes are toxic, highly flammable, explosive, or harmful to the environment.
These include the gases phosphine and arsine, which are used to produce III-V based epiwafers which are manufactured using the MOCVD process.
SPRUCE reliably and cost-effectively eliminates residues of those gaseous substances from the manufacturing plant’s waste gases. “Process waste gases are introduced through a maximum of four separate inlets into a reactor, which is heated electrically from the outside”, explains Davies.
“The heat inside the reactor breaks down the waste gases and, depending on their chemical composition, various reactions take place. In the subsequent scrubbing stage, gaseous and solid compounds generated by this process are absorbed and cooled down by a suitable scrubbing liquid, he continues.” Afterwards, the waste gases are cooled and cleaned can be released through the roof without any concern.
The waste gas abatement takes place without burning. Due to its small footprint, the equipment can be either installed in the fab’s basement or in the direct vicinity of the CVD system itself.
“SPRUCE is characterised by its low cost of ownership and high level system availability”, concludes Davies. The system’s integrated cleansing mechanism inside the reactor ensures long maintenance cycles and the equipment can easily be integrated into a monitoring network.
For applications that require close to 100% system use, DAS Environmental Expert has developed SPRUCE DUO. This variant of SPRUCE features two reactor/scrubbing systems which can work in parallel with each other. In the event of maintenance on one of the systems, the other takes over the entire waste gas treatment.
