Evaluation of Outgassing Compounds from Cleanroom Construction Materials

The control of organic outgassing from cleanroom construction materials is becoming stricter, as semiconductor device geometries continue to shrink. In this article, a dynamic headspace sampling technique coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was studied for evaluating cleanroom construction materials. With this method, the outgassing amount increases linearly with increasing sampling time. The outgassing rate is determined from the slope of this curve. The logarithm of the outgassing rate shows a linear relation with a reciprocal number of the absolute temperature of outgassing. By using this relationship, the outgassing rate of materials at temperatures of interest can be estimated from the available data.