CIC Photonics applications

Solar technology as a renewable energy technology is spreading around the world, with major manufacturing operations occurring in China, Germany, Spain, and the U.S. For solar photovoltaics, specialty chemicals are required for the production of the photovoltaic materials.

The highest purity of ammonia is a requisite chemical gas for the production of flat panel displays and for LEDs; the purity issue is one of achieving moisture levels at the ppb level, as in the case of epitaxial reactor applications. However, the problem requiring a solution derives in part from the fact that the FTIR spectra for moisture and ammonia overlap to the degree that the moisture peaks are masked by the ammonia peaks at high concentrations. As a result the moisture peaks cannot be used for quantitative concentration measurements.

The company’s entry into the electronic specialty gas market originated in 1994-95 as a consequence of the semiconductor industry’s demand for increasingly higher purity gases from the major gas producers. The issue was then and remains today to be primarily moisture impurity levels in the cleaning, etching, and treatment gases used in wafer production. In that earlier period when common wafer sizes were 6” and 12”, the semi industry required moisture concentrations to be 250 to 500 ppb or better; with each year after that the industry tightened its requirements such that today the moisture specifications are 1 to 5 ppb or better.

CIC Photonics’ extensive experience with gas analysis has also included what the industry refers to as Specialty Gases, as distinguished from Semi Gases, Electronic Specialty Gases, and Industrial Gases. Specialty Gases are high purity gases used across many applications by researchers, by government agencies, and by commercial businesses. Included among these users and applications are: hospitals for medical gases; environmental labs and testing companies for blends of protocol gas mixtures; calibration gases; spectroscopy standards; gas composition measurements and confirmations; and others.

Pollutant emissions from industrial smoke stacks are a major national concern due to both health concerns and climate change. As a consequence, there are at least tens of gas analyzer manufacturers in the U.S. alone that compete in that market and have done so for years. What CIC Photonics brings to that competitive field is its expertise derived from its Combustion Efficiency Solution and its high performance IRGAS Systems. The IRGAS-CEM provides real-time and simultaneous measurements of the multitude of toxic combustion products, including CO, CO2, NOx, SOx, CH4, CxHy, H2S, etc. The EP-IRGAS-SPA is also applicable for fast time responses.

CIC Photonics has made its mark with several R&D institutes where research is underway to determine the optimum thermodynamic performance of new turbine engine designs combined with new diesel fuel formulations. This sophisticated IRGAS technology has included not only a basic FTIR gas analyzer but also analyzers for H2, O2, THC, and a powder meter all integrated into a comprehensive IRGAS Solution.

The nation has stockpiled thousands of cylinders and canisters of toxic and deadly chemical weapon agents, including mustard gas (HD), sarin (GB), tabun (GA), and V-agents. Most of these CWAs are stored at DOD facilities around the country and many have been in storage for years and years. As a consequence, DOD requirements specify that the stockpiles have to be monitored regularly for leakages to prevent release to the environment and exposure to personnel.

The threat of terror in the form of chemical and biological warfare agents has been a reality globally since March 1995, when the Aum Shinrikyo sect killed 12 people and injured nearly 6,000 by releasing sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system. More recently, the 2001 anthrax attacks in the USA was a wake-up call that the threat is real. Recent outbreaks of H1N1 and SARS posed threats of worldwide epidemics because air travel provides a means for these diseases to spread globally in less than 24 hours. A major concern of several US government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not only the detection of hazardous chemical and biological warfare agents (CBWA) or bacteria or viruses that pose an epidemic threat, but the timely decontamination of those agents to a level where they no longer pose a threat to human health and life. The solution requires a means to monitor the effectiveness of the decontaminating reactant or reactants to an endpoint that has been reliably shown to be more than 99% effective in rendering the targeted agents harmless under controlled conditions.

Universities and research institutes, including federal agencies and laboratories, regularly call upon CIC Photonics to custom design and fabricate gas cells and FTIR gas analyzers for innovative research studies. Their research spans a range from the synthesis of new chemicals to spectroscopy of the universe. Hence, their requirements often demand the complete utilization of the company’s staffing skills in physical chemistry, chemical engineering, optics, mechanical engineering, and electronic engineering, as well as computer programming.

CIC Photonics first applied its IRGAS technology to semi-gases when a major semiconductor equipment manufacturer, Applied Materials, requested a demo of its capability to monitor gas quality for epitaxial reactor applications; that was in year 2000. The IRGAS System met all of the technical requirements, which included ppb sensitivity for moisture as an impurity, gas cell chemical resistance to both acid and basic semi-gases, and fast concentration tracking time response.