Organic contamination deposited on wafer surfaces from ultrapure water (UPW) can seriously undermine wafer-cleaning efficiency, which leads to nonuniform etching. In addition, carbon-rich hydrophobic wafer surfaces are known to affect gate-oxide growth rates and reliability, In the semiconductor and disk-drive industries, organic compounds in UPW are usually monitored as total oxidizable carbon (TOC) using instruments that provide excellent sensitivity but do not identify the contaminants. Unlike existing methods, a combination TD-GC-MS technique can identify semi-volatile compounds, such as phthalates and siloxanes, which can affect wafer and disk-media processing. Read more