Since the beginning of IC wafer fabrication, manufacturers have waged war against corrosive contaminants, relying on processing equipment within clean rooms having filters, monitors and/or mini-environments using containers identified as PODs, FOSBs (front opening shipping box) and/or FOUPs (front opening unified pod). These containers employ the concepts of Standard Mechanical Interface (SMIF). The clean rooms and containers have the purpose of significantly reducing IC die yield losses traceable to airborne molecular contaminants (AMCs). Examples of AMCs are HF (hafnium), HCL (hydrochloride) and VOC (volatile organic compounds). Although AMCs remain elusive, they are traceable to indoor and outdoor chemical activities.
Nitrogen purging (pressure method) is one prior art method of the reducing AMCs in the wafer container and use of a vacuum is the other. However, both are expensive and tend to move the AMCs to other locations where they can cause problems.
Even further, these same manufacturers are known to employ wafer-packaging methodologies that specify containers with little or no adequate features to simultaneously control breakage, corrosive and/or electrical damage to packaged IC wafers during transport and/or storage phases after fabrication phases for further downstream processing. This oversight can add to the reduced IC die yields after probing phases and before bonding phases.
AMCs known to cause corrosive damage to IC wafers being fabricated within clean rooms mostly belong to the organic and inorganic chemical families. Inorganic AMCs such as HL, H2S, HNO3 and HCL are mostly traceable to indoor chemical activities required for wafer fabrication and organic AMCs such as CnHx are mostly traceable to outdoor activities such as vehicle exhaust fumes. Further, wafer boxes, separators and cushions requiring “chemical additives” to achieve dissipative (10E5 to <10E11 ohms) surfaces to avoid electro-static discharge (ESD) events can outgas AMCs resulting in corrosive damage to surfaces of packaged wafers. Even further, there is the additional problem defined as “waves of mechanical shock energy” traceable to container mishandling that can create breakage damage to packaged wafers during transport and/or storage phases. Accordingly present day wafer shipping containers have little or no features to simultaneously address breakage, corrosive and ESD damages all of which could result in reduction in IC die yields. This can be a serious problem for 21st Century IC wafers such as 300 mm and 450 mm sizes with smaller geometries having much faster speeds. This relates to said problem traceable to the fact at one point in time corrosive AMCs within environments of containers packaged with wafers during fabrication, storage and/or transport stages were considered harmless, but now are attributed to costly IC die losses traceable to chemical interaction with AMCs.