KR101479691B1 - D2 gas recycling system for semi-conductor equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

Disclosed in the present invention is a heavy hydrogen gas recycling system for regenerating a heavy hydrogen gas in a mixed gas by using a nitrogen and oxygen separation membrane for recycling heavy hydrogen gas among components of the mixed gas discharged from such as semiconductor equipment. Accordingly, the system has an effect of reducing the costs by separating and regenerating heavy hydrogen by a method of separating oxygen or nitrogen which is a different element compared with an existing method of extracting heavy hydrogen from the mixed gas. Moreover, the system has an advantage of obtaining high purity heavy hydrogen by efficiently separating other gases from the discharged mixed gas generated in such as semiconductor equipment through the gas separating membrane.

Description

{D2 GAS RECYCLING SYSTEM FOR SEMI-CONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT}

The present invention relates to a deuterium gas recycling system for semiconductor equipment, and more particularly, to a deuterium gas recycling system for semiconductor equipment, which is capable of regenerating deuterium gas in a mixed gas using nitrogen and oxygen separation membranes, To a deuterium gas recycling system.

Various utility gases are used in the semiconductor / LCD device manufacturing process. The semiconductor device is manufactured by repeating a series of processes including a film forming process, a photolithography process, an etching process, an impurity implantation process, and a metal process.

Various types of gases are used in the above-described series of processes for manufacturing such a semiconductor device. That is, the nitrogen used in the dry pump / manufacturing equipment is used variously to prevent line contamination and to remove moisture and foreign matter from the device. Oxygen is used by chemical reaction with other gases, and CDA is driven by a valve In order to improve the yield and quality of a semiconductor device, it is essential to use a high-purity gas for preventing contamination.

On the other hand, in order to prevent fire and explosion and powder from being formed in the piping part of the production facility at the production sites of semiconductor and LCD, silane or the like, Nitrogen gas is supplied for purge purposes.

In the facilities used for low temperature deposition, etching, and thin film processes, which are chemical vapor deposition processes of semiconductor and LCD wafer fabrication processes (FAB), various gases are used in the production process. Therefore, an analysis of the degree of moisture content, concentration evaluation, purity or composition of the gases is performed before the process is performed, and the gas analyzer is varied according to the characteristics of each of the gases.

However, conventionally, there is a problem that user costs are incurred because a utility line is installed on a user side and a utility gas is supplied and used, and there is a problem that reliability is somewhat lowered even in a stable supply of utility gas. Particularly, although a method of directly separating D2 gas by a method of regenerating deuterium among the mixed gas components was used, there was a problem in terms of stability such as explosion.

As a prior art for a process gas processing method, there is disclosed a process for plasma-decomposing a process gas to form an exhaust gas containing carbon dioxide with the technique disclosed in Korean Patent Publication No. 2010-0032674; And a step of adsorbing carbon dioxide in the exhaust gas using a material activated by the plasma. However, as described in the present invention, it is also possible to use a gas separation membrane to remove deuterium gas And does not disclose the contents of recycling.

1. Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2010-0032674 entitled " Process gas treatment method and treatment device " (published on Mar. 26, 2010)

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a deuterium-containing gas deuterium that can regenerate deuterium gas in a mixed gas by using a nitrogen separator to recycle the deuterium gas among components of a mixed gas discharged from semiconductor equipment, Gas recycling system.

It is still another object of the present invention to provide a small and medium-sized gas recycling system for a semiconductor and an LCD facility, which can reduce costs compared to conventional ones by separating and regenerating deuterium through a gas separation membrane.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a semiconductor device comprising: a storage tank connected to a mixed gas line discharged after processing a semiconductor substrate; A first filter unit for removing impurities contained in the mixed gas discharged from the storage tank; A gas separation unit in which a nitrogen separation membrane is formed to separate nitrogen in the mixed gas components discharged from the first filter unit; A second filter unit for removing impurities contained in the gas discharged from the gas separation unit; And a buffer unit for maintaining a flow rate and a pressure of the gas passing through the second filter unit at a constant level.

The gas separation unit has a structure in which the nitrogen separation membrane is embedded in a chamber. The nitrogen separation membrane is configured to have a porous fiber membrane structure for separating nitrogen from a supplied gas mixture. And a pump for causing the first filter unit to flow to the second filter unit.

And a tank unit for finally storing the gas passing through the buffer unit. Between the tank unit and the buffer unit, a compressor for compressing gas to a high pressure and an auxiliary filter unit for removing impurities from the compressed gas are provided .

As described above, the present invention provides a deuterium gas recycling system capable of regenerating deuterium gas in a mixed gas using a nitrogen separator to recycle the deuterium gas among components of a mixed gas discharged from a semiconductor facility or the like.

Therefore, it is possible to separate and regenerate deuterium by a method of separating nitrogen, which is another element, compared to the method of extracting deuterium from the existing mixed gas, thereby achieving cost effectiveness.

In addition, other gases can be efficiently separated from the exhaust gas mixture generated in the semiconductor equipment or the like through the gas separation membrane, and deuterium with high purity can be obtained.

1 is a schematic view schematically showing a deuterium gas recycling system according to the present invention.

Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of a deuterium gas recycling system according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Prior to this, terms and words used in the present specification and claims should not be construed as being limited to ordinary or dictionary terms, and the inventor should appropriately define the concept of the term to describe its invention in the best way The present invention should be construed in accordance with the meaning and concept consistent with the technical idea of the present invention.

Therefore, the embodiments described in the present specification and the configurations shown in the drawings are merely the most preferred embodiments of the present invention and are not intended to represent all of the technical ideas of the present invention. Therefore, various equivalents It should be understood that water and variations may be present.

Hereinafter, a deuterium gas recycling system according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

A deuterium gas recycling system for semiconductor and LCD equipment according to the present invention comprises: a storage tank (100) connected to a mixed gas line discharged after semiconductor substrate processing; A first filter unit 200 for removing impurities contained in the mixed gas discharged from the storage tank 100; A gas separation unit 300 having a nitrogen separation membrane for separating nitrogen from the mixed gas components discharged from the first filter unit 200; A second filter unit 400 for removing impurities contained in the gas discharged from the gas separation unit 300; And a buffer unit 500 for maintaining the flow rate and pressure of the gas passing through the second filter unit 400 constant.

First, a piping line connecting each of the above-described components is equipped with a valve, and has a structure capable of controlling the progress of each step. In other words, not only can the flow rate be adjusted through each valve, but it can be adjusted through the valve if it goes straight to the next step.

First, the storage tank 100 can store a mixed gas discharged from a semiconductor or an LCD facility. In particular, it can be regarded as a system for separating and regenerating high purity deuterium gas from an exhaust gas containing deuterium gas.

The gas discharged from the storage tank 100 is first passed through the first filter unit 200 to remove impurities. The harmful gas decomposition material filled in the first filter unit 200 may be in the form of granules. The harmful gas decomposition material may include a carrier having a shape and a metal salt formed on the outside of the carrier. The carrier may be, for example, activated carbon, activated alumina, activated silica, zeolite, diatomaceous earth or a combination thereof. The cation of the metal salt includes at least one of copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), zinc (Zn), lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce) and neodymium . The anion of the metal salt may be, for example, one of nitrate ion (NO3), sulfate ion (SO4) and chloride ion (Cl-). Hazardous gas decomposition materials include toxic gases such as ammonia (NH3), silane (SiH4), chlorine (Cl2), hydrogen chloride (HCl), boron chloride (BCl3), and harmful gases such as sulfur oxides Oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and the like can be removed. In this case, it is needless to say that each of the harmful gas decomposition materials can be manufactured and used depending on the kind of the harmful gas.

Next, the first filter unit 200 passes through the gas separation unit 300 to separate nitrogen from the gas from which the impurities have been removed. A mixed exhaust gas is supplied to the gas separation unit 300, wherein the nitrogen is separated by the nitrogen separation membrane. In other words, the nitrogen separation membrane is a special polymer new material and is a functional material that can selectively separate the air component. When the gas mixture contacts the inside of the membrane, components that pass quickly to the external surface are concentrated, . For example, a gas separation membrane, that is, a nitrogen separation membrane, is used to concentrate nitrogen in the air.

In this case, the nitrogen separator is made of Teflon, and nitrogen flows separately from the Teflon nitrogen separator and flows through the micro hole of the nitrogen separator, Is discharged to separate nitrogen. As a result, nitrogen can be separated from the mixed gas and only deuterium can be extracted.

As described above, the second filter unit 400 is further passed through in order to decompose the impurities contained in the gas discharged from the gas separation unit 300. The detailed description of the second filter unit 400 will be omitted because it is the same as that described in the first filter unit 200 described above.

Next, the buffer unit 500 passes the gas through the second filter unit 400 to keep the flow rate and pressure of the gas constant. The buffer unit 500 maintains the flow rate and the pressure of the gas constant, And a homogeneous gas supply function composed of deuterium can be performed.

A compressor may be further installed to increase the pressure before the gas filtered by the gas separation unit flows into the second filter unit. The compressor compresses the gas to a high pressure to efficiently transport the gas. And is stored in a tank for ultimately storing the gas that has passed through the buffer unit and is stored as a gas having a high purity deuterium component.

In addition, in the gas recycling system according to the present invention, the gas passing through the buffer unit 500 may include a compressor 530 for increasing the pressure of the gas to be stored in the final tank unit 600, And the auxiliary filter unit 550 is the same as the structure of the filter unit described above, so a description thereof will be omitted.

The mixed gas emitted from the equipment needs to be protected from the problem during processing, including dangerous deuterium gas which is highly explosive. In an inventive way

Although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the above embodiments, it is needless to say that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit of the present invention.

100: storage tank 200: first filter unit
300: Gas separation membrane 350: Pump
400: second filter unit 500: buffer unit
530: compressor 550: auxiliary filter unit
600: Final tank portion

Claims (6)

A storage tank (100) connected to a mixed gas line discharged after semiconductor substrate processing;
A first filter unit 200 for removing impurities contained in the mixed gas discharged from the storage tank 100;
A gas separation unit 300 having a nitrogen separation membrane for separating nitrogen from the mixed gas components discharged from the first filter unit 200;
A second filter unit 400 for removing impurities contained in the gas discharged from the gas separation unit 300; And
And a buffer unit (500) for keeping the flow rate and pressure of the gas passing through the second filter unit (400) constant.
The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the gas separation unit (300) has a structure in which the nitrogen separation membrane is embedded in the chamber.
3. The method of claim 2,
Wherein the nitrogen separation membrane is configured to have a porous fiber membrane structure for separating nitrogen from the supplied mixed gas.
The method according to claim 1,
Further comprising a pump (350) for allowing the gas filtered by the gas separator (300) to flow to the second filter unit (400).
The method according to claim 1,
And a tank unit (600) for ultimately storing the gas that has passed through the buffer unit (500).
6. The method of claim 5,
A compressor 530 for compressing the gas to a high pressure and an auxiliary filter unit 550 for removing impurities from the compressed gas are further provided between the tank unit 600 and the buffer unit 500 Gas recycling system for semiconductor substrate processing.

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