Mitsubishi Corp is financing a new company called Ultra Clean Technology Systems & Services Inc to develop ultraclean gas panels and gas delivery systems for the US semiconductor industry. The company plans to build a 3,000-square-foot clean room in Menlo Park, California, 1,300-square-feet of which will be class 1, 0.1-micron super clean and be producing ultraclean gas panels for launch in September. According to Electronic News, the company intends to form partnerships with semiconductor manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, gas companies and subcontractors. The directors and officers of the new company come from its backers, including three representatives from Mitsubishi Corp and Mitsubishi International; one from Motoyama Engineering Works Ltd and one from Cybeq Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Materials Corp. Ultra Clean is not prepared to disclose the amount of funding involved. All forthcoming products will be based on technology developed by Tadahiro Ohmi of Tohuko University in Sondhai, where Dr Ohmi has been a proponent of ultra-clean technology for a number of years. He established the Ultraclean Society which swaps information with a number of industry leaders like Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Digital Equipment Corp, Intel Corp, IBM Corp and Sematech. Hisayoshi Kobayashi, president and chief executive of Ultraclean, says that the ultraclean manufacturing processes are necessary for the production of devices with line widths smaller than 0.5-micron, and the manufacture of ultra-clean gas delivery systems is one component in the development of a total environment. He claims that recent studies by Hitachi Ltd indicate that between 60% and 70% of wafer surface contamination occurs in the gas delivery systems and process chamber. Ultraclean technology seeks to eliminate such contamination by minimising the surface roughness inside tubing, reducing dead space in tubing and process chambers and creating systems which are leak-free, particle-free and devoid of dead space. Also, more refined gas delivery systems deliver significant benefits in terms of cost, reducing the overheads of wafer fabrication, and by gathering data from a variety of manufacturers, Ultraclean can promote standardisation and reduced the need for expensive customisation.
