Significant progress has been made with 2 years of research on the formation of shock sensitive silane gels. This will be the second all day seminar on hexachlorodislane. It will cover the lifecycle from supplier to use and equipment. As noted last year, one manufacturer burned down their US facility plus the fatal accident (5 died and 13 injured) in Japan. A number of fires/explosions have occurred during PM. There are some systems that we do not yet know how to remove these safely. In one I shut the site down for a week as we attempted to dissolve the gel. As the small pieces hit the ground they exploded
Reactive HCDS Byproducts
2019 SESHA PDC
Since the Reactive Silane Byproducts PDC in April 2018, another year of research has been conducted on this important topic. In one test program, a custom benchscale system was used to simulate a user system and process conditions to better understand how these reactive gels are formed. A key finding is that the reactive gels formed by hydrolysis of hexachlorodisilane is different than hydrolyzed HCDS reactor gels. While both forms can be shock sensitive, they exhibit different chemical and physical properties.
Some of the gels formed are so shock sensitive that a fire occurred when a label was peeled off of a vacuum pump containing gels. A chlorosilane manufacturer reported that a facility bicycle rolled over dried deposits on the ground and reported hearing “popping” sounds.
The most likely place for these gels to form are in the reactor system vacuum pumps after the heated foreline. The gels from a number of pumps from 2 US users have been studied. These gels are viscous and waxy like that quickly reacts to a brittle solid after exposure to ambient air.
This PDC will have the same speakers from 2018 plus Global Foundries. Key topics will be
Speakers from
Eugene Ngai
Chemically Speaking LLC
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