Silicon and Germanium Corrosion by Fluorinated Chemistry in Presence of Wafer Charging

Fluorinated chemistries can lead to severe corrosion damage towards silicon and germanium based materials when wafers have a significant amount of electrostatic charges. This corrosion is evidenced on both single wafer and batch tools. It can be prevented by the presence of enough light, and wafer charging can also be eradicated by photo emission with UV light.