The Static Elimination System with Soft X-ray Air Ionizer Used in ULSI Cleanroom

Soft X-ray air ionizers are widely used for static control in semiconductor manufacturing processes because of the contamination free ionizer. However, the positive ions and the negative ions would recombine each other in transport process. In addition, the elimination time that is the time for eliminating charged bodies would get longer. So we propose the static elimination system with a soft X-ray air ionizer in order to reduce the effect of recombination and shorten the elimination time. The static elimination system was designed, made, and evaluated. As a result, the elimination time of the system operated under the optimum condition is 2.5 times shorter than a conventional soft X-ray air ionizer.