Model of point-of-use plasma abatement of perfluorinated compounds with an inductively coupled plasma

Point-of-use plasma abatement (PPA) has been proposed as one way to eliminate perfluorinated compound (PFC) emission from various tools used in integrated circuit manufacturing. PPA employs a high density plasma between the process tool turbomolecular pump and the backing pump. Oxygen is added to the process tool effluent upstream of the PPA tool. The mixture of oxygen and PFC-containing tool effluent enters the PPA tool and the PFCs are converted to products that can be scrubbed downstream of the backing pump. In this article, we present a model for the PPA tool operation, illustrating the principles with a mixture of C2F6/O-2. A plasma model is coupled to a neutral transport and reaction model, including electron-impact molecular dissociation and subsequent gas phase chemistry. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(99)02413-5].