Economical Clean Dry Air System for Closed Manufacturing System

We demonstrated that the organic carbon contaminants influenced the J-E characteristics of a gate oxide. Molecular-contamination-free clean dry air (CDA) is a choice for the atmosphere control in a closed manufacturing system. The adsorption and desorption characteristics, which are important items for the design and operation of CDA production plants, were confirmed with both a dynamic simulation and a pilot column. Based on the results, we built a CDA plant with a capacity of 4000 m/sup 3//h, and confirmed that each contamination concentration was less than 10 ppb. We also proposed the economical CDA system using a power recycle device which has been newly developed. Using this CDA system, it is possible to reduce the power consumption in the CDA plant. Also, it is possible to realize the circulation of the used CDA without generating more contamination or power consumption.