Numerical study of internal flow behavior at low vacuum in semiconductor industry

In the semiconductor industry, internal flow, especially occurring in a vacuum, is of interest because it is important to estimate particle behavior by fluid flow. resulting in defects that significantly affect the loss of mass production. However, due to the lack of experimental data on vacuum flow properties, it is difficult to accurately predict or analyze flow behavior, and thus we rely on the flow simulation by assuming the flow as a continuum. In the present study, we have conducted flow simulation using commercial package ANSYS, despite being used due to the low computational cost requirements of industrial processes, to estimate particle behavior caused by vacuum flow inside the semiconductor equipment such as extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machinery and gas transport pipeline. The continuum Navier-Stokes equations together with particle dynamics were used to predict particle and flow behaviors and the results are in quite good agreement with inspection results or equipment tendency.