Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) is used in the semiconductor industry to clean, etch impurities on silicon wafers and strip photoresist during the chip production processes. The reduction of potential contamination on silicon wafers is crucial, as trace-metal, particulate, and organic contaminants can alter the functionality of semiconductors. At the sub-ppt level, environmental contaminants are difficult to control and can easily contaminate H2SO4 and other chemicals if not properly handled.
This work presents the analysis of automatically diluted H2SO4 using PerkinElmer’s NexION® 5000 Multi-Quadrupole ICP-MS working seamlessly with the ESI prepFAST S ultraclean sample introduction system. The automated dilution and MSA calibration capabilities of the prepFAST S allowed outstanding calibration linearity for all 52 elements. And the NexION 5000 ICP-MS effectively eliminated the spectral interferences in the samples, thanks to its multi-quadrupole technology and a true-quadrupole Universal Cell pressurized with pure reaction gases, resulting in superb background equivalent concentrations (BECs) and limits of detection (LODs) while demonstrating excellent tolerance to harsh chemicals.