BOC Edwards, a leading supplier of equipment, materials and services to the microelectronics industry, today announced their alliance with Micell Integrated Systems (MIS) to further develop and commercialize technology for dense and supercritical CO2 semiconductor wafer processing. MIS develops processes and chemical formulations that enable CO2-based process solutions for the semiconductor industry. “BOC Edwards and MIS are jointly developing technology that will allow BOC Edwards to supply high-purity CO2 and chemistry, along with equipment subsystems to support the delivery of these materials to wafer processing tools,” said Chris Case, BOC Edwards chief technical officer. “We are pleased to have Micell on our development team, as they have been a great asset and complement to BOC Edwards’ development of supercritical systems.” BOC Edwards is a leading industry supplier of high-purity CO2. The joint development agreement focuses on the delivery systems of semiconductor grade CO2 at supercritical pressures and sub-fab systems for chemical blending, pressure and temperature control of CO2 before delivery to the process tools. Additional systems for CO2 recycling and waste recovery are an integral part of the delivery technology. BOC Edwards has full commercial responsibility for the technology. “The semiconductor industry is evaluating and rapidly adopting new wafer cleaning technology using supercritical CO2,” said Jim McClain, President of MIS. “The alliance with BOC Edwards is extremely powerful and has enabled us to go to market with the only integrated solution for CO2–based processes.” The initial applications for supercritical CO2 include wafer drying, cleaning and photoresist stripping processes. Because of supercritical CO2‘s unique physical and chemical properties, the fluid can penetrate the fine features of sub-90nm structures, perform the required cleaning or drying function, and vacate the features in preparation for the next process step. To perform these processes the industry needs high purity CO2 at pressures ranging from 40 to 200 bar and integrated chemical formulations designed to provide the CO2 with the required process functionality. Since there are few uses for CO2 in the fab today, to install these new processes, wafer fabs are now building infrastructure to support the CO2 based processes of the future. MIS has extensive intellectual property, know-how, and experience in using CO2 for industrial processes. BOC Edwards has the exclusive rights to products derived from Micell’s intellectual property (IP) and jointly developed IP in wafer cleaning, stripping and drying for the microelectronics markets.