• Particle and aerosol research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.129-136
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• 2022

The line width of circuits in semiconductor devices continues to decrease down to a few nanometers. Since nanoparticles attached to the patterned wafer surface may cause malfunction of the devices, it is crucial to remove the contaminant nanoparticles. Physical cleaning that utilizes momentum of liquid for detaching solid nanoparticles has recently been tested in place of the conventional chemical method. Dropwise impaction has been employed to increase the removal efficiency with expectation of more efficient momentum exchange. To date, most of relevant studies have been focused on drop spreading behavior on a horizontal surface in terms of maximum spreading diameters and average spreading velocity of drop. More important is the local liquid velocity at the position of nanoparticle, very near the surface, rather than the vertical average value. In addition, there are very scarce existing studies dealing with microdroplet impaction that may be desirable for minimizing pattern demage of the wafer. In this study, we investigated the local velocity distribution in spreading liquid film under various impaction conditions through the CFD simulation. Combining the numerical results with the particle removal model, we estimated an effective cleaning diameter (ECD), which is a measure of the particle removal capacity of a single drop, and presented the predicted ECD data as a function of droplet's velocity and diameter particularly when the droplets are microns in diameter.