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Methods and apparatus for a cogeneration abatement system for electronic device manufacturing

Methods and apparatus for a cogeneration abatement system for electronic device manufacturing description/claims

The present application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/931,731, filed May 25, 2007 and entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Abating Effluent Gases Using Modular Treatment Components” (Attorney Docket No. 12073/L), which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety for all purposes.

Also, co-pending, commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/686,005, filed Mar. 14, 2007 and entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVED OPERATION OF AN ABATEMENT SYSTEM” (Attorney Docket No. 9139), is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety and for all purposes.

The present invention relates generally to electronic device manufacturing and more particularly relates to methods and systems for abating effluent gases produced in electronic device manufacturing.

Electronic device manufacturing process tools (hereinafter “process tools”) conventionally employ chambers or other suitable apparatus adapted to perform processes (e.g., chemical vapor deposition, epitaxial silicon growth, and etch, etc.) to manufacture electronic devices. Such processes may produce effluents having undesirable, harmful and/or dangerous chemicals as by-products of the processes. Conventional electronic device manufacturing systems may use abatement apparatus to treat or abate the effluents.

Thus, the gaseous effluents from the manufacturing of electronic devices including semiconductor materials, devices, products and memory articles involve a wide variety of chemical compounds used and produced in the process tools. These compounds include inorganic and organic compounds, breakdown products of photo-resist and other reagents, and a wide variety of other gases that must be removed from the waste gas before being vented from the process facility into the atmosphere.

Electronic device manufacturing processes utilize a variety of chemicals, many of which have extremely low human tolerance levels. Such materials include gaseous hydrides of antimony, arsenic, boron, germanium, nitrogen, phosphorous, silicon, selenium, silane, silane mixtures with phosphine, argon, hydrogen, organosilanes, halosilanes, halogens, organometallics and other organic compounds.

Halogens, e.g., fluorine (F2) and other fluorinated compounds, are particularly problematic among the various components requiring abatement. The electronics industry uses perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in wafer processing tools to remove residue from deposition steps and to etch thin films. PFCs are recognized to be strong contributors to global warming and the electronics industry is working to reduce the emissions of these gases. The most commonly used PFCs include, but are not limited to, CF4, C2F6, SF6, C3F8, C4H8, C4H8O and NF3. In practice, these PFCs are dissociated in a plasma to generate highly reactive fluoride ions and fluorine radicals, which do the actual cleaning and/or etching. The effluent from these processing operations include mostly fluorine, silicon tetrafluoride (SiF4), hydrogen fluoride (HF), carbonyl fluoride (COF2), CF4 and C2F6.

A significant problem of the semiconductor industry has been the removal of these materials from the effluent gas streams. While virtually all U.S. semiconductor manufacturing facilities utilize scrubbers or similar means for treatment of their effluent gases, the technology employed in these facilities is not capable of removing all toxic or otherwise unacceptable impurities.

One solution to this problem is to incinerate the process gas to oxidize the toxic materials, converting them to less toxic forms. Such systems are almost always over-designed in terms of treatment capacity, and typically do not have the ability to safely deal with a large number of mixed chemistry streams without posing complex reactive chemical risks. Further, conventional incinerators typically achieve less than complete combustion thereby allowing the release of pollutants, such as carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbons (HC), to the atmosphere. Furthermore, one of the problems of great concern in effluent treatment is the formation of acid mist, acid vapors, acid gases and NOx (NO, NO2) prior to discharge.

In addition, conventional incinerators may be expensive to operate due to the consumption of fuel that may be required to satisfactorily combust the effluent. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an improved thermal reactor for the decomposition of highly thermally resistant contaminants in a waste gas that provides high temperatures, through the introduction of highly flammable gases, to ensure substantially complete decomposition of said waste stream while simultaneously reducing the cost of operating such a reactor.

In some aspects, a method of operating an electronic device manufacturing system is provided, including pumping effluent from a processing chamber to a reaction chamber; combusting the effluent in the reaction chamber; driving a turbine with combustion gases from the reaction chamber; generating power from the turbine; and applying the power generated by the turbine to operate the pump.

In other aspects , a system for electronic device manufacturing is provided, including a processing chamber; a pump coupled to the processing chamber and adapted to draw effluent from the processing chamber; a reaction chamber coupled to the pump and adapted to receive the effluent from the pump; and a turbine coupled to the reaction chamber and adapted to be driven by combustion gases from the reaction chamber. The turbine is adapted to generate power which is applied to operate the pump.

In yet other aspects an apparatus for abating effluent from an electronic device manufacturing system is provided, including a pump adapted to couple to a processing chamber and adapted to draw effluent from the processing chamber; a reaction chamber coupled to the pump and adapted to receive the effluent from the pump; and a turbine coupled to the reaction chamber and adapted to be driven by combustion gases from the reaction chamber. The turbine is adapted to generate power which is applied to operate the pump.

Numerous other aspects are provided in accordance with these and other aspects of the invention. Other features and aspects of the present invention will become more fully apparent from the following detailed description, the appended claims and the accompanying drawings.

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