A new economical wafer drying technology with high process performance

Requirements for a Si wafer cleaning and drying technology with better performance and better cost efficiency, as well as less environmental pollution are on the increase, as the wafer diameter becomes larger and the pattern design rule becomes as small as 0.25 /spl mu/m and below. The conventional IPA vapor dryers are widely used for wafer drying today, however, this method requires a large amount of IPA. Here, we report a new drying method (Stacked Dual Chamber Dry) using a small amount of IPA vapor in inert gas. It was found that the new drying method consumes one-fourth of the IPA with conventional drying and processing time is significantly shortened.