Advances in Abatement of Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) with Microwave Plasma

Abstract

Perfluorocarbons have been widely used in the semiconductor industry. As highly potent global warming gases, they have extremely long atmospheric lifetime and intensive absorption ability of infrared radiation. Naturally, the abatement of PFCs becomes a critical environmental issue. In this paper, an effort is made to review the development of microwave plasma technology for the control of PFCs. Relevant studies indicate that microwave plasma has the advantage of high electron temperature and high electron density which is of great potential to PFCs abatement. Low pressure microwave plasma may interfere with the normal operation of semiconductor manufacturing processes. At atmospheric pressure, microwave plasmas exhibit high react performance with PFCs. The atmospheric pressure microwave plasma combined with catalyst can reduce the microwave power and increase the destruction and removal efficiency and energy efficiency. The combination technology has a good potential to be used as an integrated technology for abating PFCs from complicated gas streams of semiconductor manufacturing processes.