Diaphragm durability enhancement for valves supplying gas for atomic layer deposition

Semiconductor devices are manufactured from Silicon wafers via diverse processes and application-specific equipment that requires supply of various gases. The gas supply system consists of pressure regulators, pressure gauges, filters, flow controllers, valves, fittings etc. The valves in this system are important parts for controlling and stopping the flow of gases. A wide variety of valves are used throughout the industrial world, but those used for semiconductor manufacturing require special features such as external leak-free, particle-free and dead space-free, because the extremely fine patterns formed on the high grade wafers are made with ultrapure process gases. In addition to these features, the valves must be durable enough to operate several tens of millions of cycles because of faster processing requirements with ALD applications. This research work was done to develop a highly durable diaphragm valve and to verify its durability performance via stress analysis.