When it Comes to Safety, Some Things Never Change

One of the most crucial processes in the manufacturing of semiconductor technologies is the dispensation of various hazardous and volatile gasses. As technologies have advanced to require new methods of manufacturing, so have the tools of the trade. Automatic gas cabinets revolutionized operating efficiency and safety by combining gas storage, gas panels, and software to oversee the operation. But one thing has remained the same: there is no replacement for a quality cylinder cabinet, and in the manufacturing of semiconductors, where there is literally no room for a safety error, this is especially true.

Semiconductor production employs gasses that are both extremely volatile and extremely hazardous: if some gasses contaminate the environment to just 1 ppm, that environment can become lethal. Chlorine, arsene, phosphene, ammonia, boron tetrachloride, cyline – the list of gasses used in semiconductor manufacturing can sound more like a chemical weapons checklist than a list of useful industrial chemicals. Since efficient production practices require that manufacturers maintain at least enough gas inventory to take them through a production cycle, proper storage of these hazardous materials is essential. There are a variety of cylinder cabinets to meet a variety of needs; stripped down models to house inert gasses, and other cabinets still that bear closer resemblance to Fort Knox than to any kind of storage locker.

For inert gasses like argon, CO2, nitrogen, or even air mixtures, the sufficient cylinder cabinet will include a lock and some sort of perforations through which to see the labels on the cylinders and count them for inventory. These are often metal frame cabinets that can be ordered in a variety of sizes to accommodate different configurations of cylinders – whether stacked horizontally or shelved vertically. Aluminum and steel are the most commonly used metals for cabinet construction, since they can bear the weight of heavy cylinders without being too heavy themselves; older iron cabinets exist but are no longer manufactured due to their cost and weight.

For more volatile gasses, long-term storage is inadvisable, and most manufacturers should opt to store an entire cycle’s inventory in an automatic gas cabinet for dispensing. In cases where large cylinder must be kept in inventory, there are more heavy duty cylinder cabinets that seal more tightly to prevent contamination, and include leak sensors, thermometers and fire extinguishers to address any possible contamination issue. These are usually kept out of the clean-room environment in an area that can be monitored remotely, so that any possible contamination does not affect plant workers.