Compound semiconductor material products are at the core of advances in technology, impacting our daily lives. These products offer great benefits, but the manufacturing process still remains environmentally, sustainably and financially undesirable.
It is impossible to modify the compound semiconductor manufacturing process. However, reducing total production costs and enhancing yield through improvement to ancillary support maintenance processes is possible.
Compound semiconductor material products are at the core of advances in technology, impacting our daily lives. These products offer great benefits, but the manufacturing process still remains environmentally, sustainably and financially undesirable.
It is impossible to modify the compound semiconductor manufacturing process. However, reducing total production costs and enhancing yield through improvement to ancillary support maintenance processes is possible.
A Green Technology?
The epitaxial process used for creating the semiconductor material, the first stage of LED manufacture, is the most expensive because it is a very complex process in its own right. The specialist manufacturing techniques used (such as CVD) are intensive, requiring a high level of skill and control. Furthermore, beyond requiring specialist equipment, the process has high power use, requires expensive specialist chemicals, and is a very intensive process.
In particular, the chemical reagents required are not only expensive in their own right, but highly toxic and have a significantly intensive production process of their own, including their own manufacturing impact on the environment. This is not to mention the toxic waste produced by compound semiconductor manufacturing processes that has to be carefully processed, again chemically, and disposed of.
So, although compound semiconductor products may be leading greener, more sustainable applications at point of use they have significant environmental impact footprint at point of manufacture. This is the source of the semiconductor paradox.
Aesin Ltd. has developed a process tool intended to clean susceptors, satellites, etc. from MOCVD systems used for the deposition of AlN, GaN, InN, etc. to manufacture LED’s or other devices.
Aesin Ltd. has developed a process tool intended to clean susceptors, satellites, etc. from MOCVD systems used for the deposition of AlN, GaN, InN, etc. to manufacture LED’s or other devices.
The Compound Semiconductor Constraints
Semiconductor epitaxy is a complicated engineering feat, requiring specialist knowledge and specialised equipment. In order to repeatedly produce material of high quality the process is required to be absolutely stable and reproducible. A single lost material production run can result in $100k’s of loss. To mitigate this, a locked down process, often called copy exact, is used by producers to achieve cost effectiveness in this expensive process.
The Maintenance Process
It is therefore extremely important that the reactor components, or ancillary parts are maintained to a very high standard, so as not to adversely affect the material production process. However, this can be a challenging prospect given that the components get very dirty, becoming heavily coated with process by-product.
In most situations, so as not to disturb the condition of the production reactor and potentially impact the production process, component cleaning happens externally to the material production system. Ancillaries are removed and transferred to another system to ensure no contamination of the production chamber can occur.
Improving the Compound Semiconductor Manufacturing Process
So, the current process used to maintain components is very much a sledgehammer approach, but it works and is a trusted procedure that leads to repeatable, reproducible material production. However, its less than desirable high cost and significant environmental impact offer the opportunity to both significantly decrease the overall cost of manufacture and reduce environmental impact of compound semiconductor materials production, with the correct engineering solution.