Austin, TX (May 29, 2018) SACHEM Associates Dan Montville and Tony Schleisman are presenting at the Ultrapure Micro Conference this week in Austin, Texas. The Ultrapure Micro conference explores the latest trends in microelectronics industry water and chemicals management.
The technical program has multiple, topically oriented tracks, roundtable sessions and hands-on, in-depth training sessions in advance of the conference to serve as a primer or refresher. No other industry event covers the breadth or depth of water and chemical issues for semiconductors. On Thursday May 31st at 1:00PM our associates will present on the topic of “Stop Using Detection Limits for ICP-MS.”
Ultrapure chemical specification limits for contaminants are approaching sub-ppt levels and the inherent desire for ship-to-control requires analytical capability to be multiple standard deviations below the specification. The primary issue is that at low- and sub-ppt levels the analyte signal now competes with effects from low-count sources such as blank contamination and non-“element” mass-to-charge signal, matrix effects, particles, rinse in/out of analyte, and many others.
Analyte ions reaching the detector are governed by Poisson statistics, which forms a basis for modeling ICP-MS measurements —in particular the effects of the aforementioned low-count effects. Monte Carlo simulations are used to demonstrate these effects and illustrate their real consequences. Examples include rejection of material from false positives, effects on Gage R&R data, comparison of data between laboratories, and potential effects of random contamination versus integration time.
These are real concerns that call for the analytical community to come to agreement in terms of the issues and how to address them. This includes analytical procedures (such as evaporation/matrix removal) as well as standards for reporting.
Headquartered in Austin, Texas, SACHEM is a chemical science company with full commercial operations and research facilities in North America, Europe, China and Japan. Our technology revolves around high purity and is successfully applied in markets like electronic materials, oilfield chemicals, catalysts, polymers, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agrochemicals, and energy materials. SACHEM is ISO 9001 and RC 14001/ISO 14001 certified.
