Determination of Na and Al Ions in Semiconductor Cleaning Solution Using Capillary Electrophoresis

The most common process chemical used in the manufacturing process is a standard cleaning (SC) solution, a mixture of ammonia and hydrogen peroxide in deionized water. Since the purity of the SC solution used in the process has been required to the level of sub-ppb range, accurate and reliable determination of ionic contaminants becomes increasingly difficult. In order to satisfy the requirement of impurity control, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS), graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometer (GFAAS), and ion chromatography (IC) are currently the most common analytical instruments used in the process. However, those instruments are not designed for on-line monitoring but rather for off-line analysis. Recently, separation and detection of various particles, such as cells and nanoparticles, with capillary electrophoresis (CE) was reported, although the application of CE has been mostly limited to organic or biological samples. Capillary electrophoresis has been emerging as an alternative to ICPAES and AAS for trace metal analysis