Specialty chemicals company LANXESS has developed a new mixed-bed resin for ultra-pure water in semiconductor production. In comparison with the established Lewatit UltraPure 1296 MD mixed bed, the new UltraPure 1296 MD PLUS boasts a much lower content of metals such as iron, zinc and sodium. Early installations of the product as a final polishing filter in semiconductor manufacturing have yielded results close to the current analytical limits of detection.
LANXESS will be unveiling its new type of ion exchange resin to trade visitors at the UltraPure Micro conference being held in Austin in the US state of Texas from October 10 to 12, 2023.
“The Lewatit UltraPure 1296 MD PLUS produced in Germany is a vital component for cost-effective, sustainable and fault-free manufacturing in the fast-growing international semiconductor industry,” says Hans-Juergen Wedemeyer, Technical Marketing Manager at the Liquid Purification Technologies business unit at LANXESS.
Lewatit UltraPure 1296 MD PLUS for the toughest assignments.
The manufacturing of semiconductors and displays calls for complex water treatment to ensure that the water used is of the required purity. The latest generation of wafers and microchips demands a correspondingly high level of quality from the ion exchange resin systems employed. Furthermore, new analytical systems are capable of analyzing ions in the low ppt (parts per trillion) range. For some types of ion, they can go as low as the ppq (parts per quadrillion) range. Achieving the performance of semiconductors required by modern industry can necessitate as many as 200 treatment steps. The ultra-pure water needed for this is provided by means of a complex multi-stage process. The most important steps in the operation include conventional primary demineralization with standard ion exchange resins, reverse osmosis, degasification, ultrafiltration and hydrogen peroxide removal, while the last stage is final polishing with an ultra-pure mixed bed. The new Lewatit UltraPure 1296 MD PLUS ion exchange resin type was developed specifically for this final step, which is absolutely critical to the success of the process as a whole.
The ultra-pure water treated in this way can then be used in etching and cleaning processes in microchip production. “The high total capacity and degree of regeneration of the anion and cation exchange resins also result in excellent operating capacity for the removal of boron and silica, as well as metal ions,” says Wedemeyer.
“The bead sizes of the monodisperse components are designed to avoid an inadvertent separation of cation and anion exchange resins. Due to the special production process for Lewatit UltraPure 1296 MD PLUS, the release of particles and TOC is within an extremely low range,” adds Wedemeyer.
