Silicon (Si) is the most used semiconductor and is a critical element for producing circuits found in everyday electronics. As more industries utilize semiconductor devices and Si wafers in electronic products and services, there is an increasing demand for Si wafers with minimal impurities due to the ever-growing scale of component integration on a chip. Therefore, it is essential to have a reliable technique in the QC process to identify metallic impurities that may have been introduced during production.
This work demonstrates the coupling of an IAS Expert_PS VPD (vapor phase decomposition) system with the PerkinElmer NexION® 5000 Multi-Quadrupole ICP-MS, providing a fully automated solution for the determination of metallic impurities in Si wafers. This is due to the ICP-MS' sensitivity and its ability to remove spectral inferences when performing trace analysis in combination with a platform that eliminates manual operation and chemical exposure to operators to prevent Si wafer contamination.