Description
This is a sources sought notice. The purpose of this notice is to conduct market research and identify potential sources of commercial products/services that satisfy the Government's anticipated needs. NIST is seeking responses from all responsible sources, including large and small businesses. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 334413, Semiconductor and Related Device Manufacturing, with a Small Business Size Standard of 1,250 employees. This notice does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Quotation (RFQ), Invitation for Bids (IFB), or any commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation or award a contract. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will not pay for any information submitted in response to this notice. Submission of information is voluntary and will not result in any obligation on the part of the Government. NO SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS EXIST AT THIS TIME Requests for solicitation documents will not receive a response. Respondents shall clearly mark any proprietary or restricted information. In the absence of such markings, NIST will assume unlimited rights to all technical data submitted. BACKGROUND Semiconductor manufacturing yield enhancement requires ongoing risk analysis of cleaning chemical purity wherein critical contaminants are already at levels difficult or impossible to detect, let alone identify and quantify. Next-generation chips will require even purer materials and advanced metrological capabilities for the detection, identification, and quantification of impurities in semiconductor cleaning chemicals, necessitating a practical roadmap for assessing material purity commensurate with the needs of the next generation in semiconductor manufacturing. The purification of water to ultrapure water (UPW) is a critical process in various semiconductor and research applications, where even trace amounts of contaminants at the parts-per-billion level (ppb, 10‑9 moles per mole) can compromise the integrity of the water and affect downstream processes. High molecular weight organics (a particle precursor), metallic ions and native particles can all impact chip reliability and yield at these low concentrations. Current laboratory grade ultrapure water sources using reverse osmosis, ion exchange, and ultrafiltration can readily obtain water purities with contaminants at the ppb level. However, the development of test materials requires significantly reduced contaminant concentrations of 10 to 100 parts-per-trillion (ppt, 10-12 moles per mole). Artifact-based standards require even further reduced contamination concentrations approaching the 10's of parts-per-quadrillion (ppq, 10‑15 moles per mole). The proposed method for producing this new grade of UPW, referred to as UPW0, is to further purify UPW using sub-boiling distillation in a controlled environment ( i.e. , glove box). The sub-boiling distillation process greatly reduces contaminat…
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