Syft Technologies: Enabling Detection of Virtually all Airborne Molecular Contaminants in Semiconductor Fabs

The sterility of the fabrication environment is one of the key factors determining the fate of production batches in the semiconductor industry. Companies, to this end, are looking for a cost-efficient yet effective way to monitor for airborne contaminants across multiple fabrication processes taking place in large production facilities. Legacy technologies such as thermal desorption gas chromatography (TD-GC-MS), impingers, and optical techniques can only monitor for a specific group or class of AMCs. They also cannot identify AMCs that were not previously thought of as being problematic. This drives organizations to rely on multiple technology platforms that require expensive and time-consuming integration.

Enter Syft Technologies. The company is driving a change in the semiconductor industry—from labor and resource-intensive offline monitoring tools to online SIFTMS instruments requiring minimal handson time. SIFT-MS, a form of direct mass spectrometry to analyze volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and inorganic gases in the air with typical detection limits at parts-per-trillion levels, provides realtime trace gas analysis with the broadest range of compound detection available in semiconductor applications.

SIFT-MS utilizes the Syft compound library, which boasts over 1500 compounds and methods, to analyze each analyte’s absolute concentration. Contrast this with cheaper sensors that can only detect a single compound and require integration with other sensors to form a full test array.

SIFT-MS also provides real-time data output. Meaning, contamination events are seen as they happen. In contrast, legacy technologies like GC-MS are slow and require analysis time post-data collection. Syft instrumentation is also user-friendly, does not require prior expertise, and needs very little hands-on time.

“Our customers love being able to measure both volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and inorganic airborne molecular contaminants (AMCs) with one real-time system. The capability to consolidate contamination monitoring to a single instrument ultimately reduces customers’ cost of ownership and operating expenses,” says Alexander Fala, the CEO of Syft Technologies.