Performance Enhancement of Heat Exchangers for Semiconductor — Chip Manufacturing

Abstract

The semiconductor and its uses in transistors are briefly introduced, followed by the introduction of heat exchangers (often referred to as process chambers/reactors for IC manufacturing) for manufacturing semiconductor chips These heat exchangers can be classified, according to their functions, into six major categories: (i) heat exchangers, for the growth of thin silicon dioxide layers on a silicon wafer (also called high-temperature film furnaces), (ii) heat exchangers for doping of the masked substrate with appropriate ions (referred to as ion-implantation chambers), (iii) heat exchangers for wet/dry etching (etch chambers), (iv) heat exchangers for chemical vapor deposition (CVD reactors), (v) heat exchangers for the metallization process, and (vi) heat exchangers for heating chemical fluids. All these types of heat exchangers have one thing in common: they are all “single, solid (or tube), single-fluid” in nature, performing heat transfer by conduction, convection, or radiation. This is in sharp contrast to conventional heat exchangers in the power and refrigeration industry that consist of “double-tube (including shell-and-tube type), two-fluid” types. Therefore, heat exchangers for high-tech applications are radiative-heat-transport-controlled and are, in general easier to design and control, and environmentally clean. This lecture emphasizes how heat transfer performance can be enhanced in heat exchangers for manufacturing semiconductor chips.