• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.243-248
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• 2010

Sonic nozzles have been a standard device for measurement of steady state gas flow, as recommended in ISO 9300. This paper introduces two sonic nozzles of diameter ${\Phi}$ 0.03 mm and ${\Phi}$ 0.2 mm precisely machined according to ISO 9300. The constant volume flow meter(CVFM), readily set up in the Vacuum center of KRISS. was used to calibrate the discharge coefficients of both nozzles. The calibration results were shown to determine them within the 3% expanded measurement uncertainty. Calibrated sonic nozzles were found to be applicable for precision measurement of steady state gas flow in the vacuum process in the ranges of 0.6~1,800 cc/min. Those flow conditions are equivalent to the fine gas flow with Reynolds numbers of 26~12,100. Those encouraging results confirm that calibrated sonic nozzles enable precision measurement of extremely low gas flow encountered very often in th vacuum processes. Both calibrated sonic nozzles are proven to provide the precision measurement of the volume flow rate of the dry vacuum pump within one percent difference in reference to CVFM. Calibrated sonic nozzles are applied to a new 'in-situ and in-field' equipment designed to measure the volume flow rate of vacuum pumps in the semiconductor and flat display processes. Furthermore, they can provide other applications to flow control devices in vacuum, such as MFC, etc.