Electronic Wet Chemicals – The Indispensable Materials

Electronic wet chemicals are one of the most indispensable materials for the production process of display panels, semiconductors, solar cells, etc. Its chemical property not only directly attributes to the quality of the final electronic products but also significantly impacts microelectronics manufacturing and industrialization.

What are electronic wet chemicals?

Electronic wet chemicals, also known as ultra-clean and high-purity reagents, with the major component’s purity greater than 99.99%. It is generally required to control the particle size of impurity particles to be less than 0.5 μm and the content of metal impurities to be less than the ppm level. Electronic wet chemicals are reagents with the highest requirements regarding particle control and impurity content among chemical reagents.

Electronic wet chemicals are a subbranch of electronic chemicals, and various liquid chemical materials are used in the manufacturing process of microelectronics and optoelectronics. According to their compositions and applications, electronic wet chemicals can be further divided into general wet electronic chemicals and functional wet electronic chemicals. General electronic wet chemicals are single-component and single-function liquid electronic chemicals that are widely used, such as acids, alkalis, organic solvents, etc. Functional electronic wet chemicals refer to chemicals that achieve special functions and meet process requirements in manufacturing through compounding methods, such as stripping liquid, developer, etching liquid, cleaning liquid, etc.

Specific classifications of electronic wet chemicals

Category	Subcategory		Product Name
General Electronic Wet Chemicals	Acids		Hydrofluoric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, acetic acid, etc.
Alkalis		Ammonia, sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, etc.
Organic solvents	Alcohols	Methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, etc.
Ketones	Acetone, butanone, methyl isobutyl ketone, etc.
Esters	Ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, isoamyl acetate, etc.
Hydrocarbons	Toluene, xylene, cyclohexane, etc.
Halogenated hydrocarbons	Trichloroethylene, trichloroethane, methyl chloride, carbon tetrachloride, etc.
Others		Hydrogen peroxide, etc.
Functional Electronic Wet Chemicals	Etchants		Metal etchant, buffered oxide etchant, ITO etchant, silicon etchant, etc.
Cleaning liquids		Cleaning solution after copper polishing, cleaning solution after etching of aluminum process, cleaning solution after etching of copper process, cleaning solution after removing HKMG false gate, cleaning solution for removing flash.
Photoresist supporting reagents	Diluents	Propylene glycol methyl ether acetate, propylene glycol methyl ether, ethyl lactate.
Developers	Positive film developer, negative film developer, etc.
Stripping Solutions	Positive film stripping solution, negative film stripping solution, stripping cleaning solution, acidic stripping solution, etc.

Applications of Electronic Wet Chemicals

There are three major application areas of electronic wet chemicals, i.e., the panel display manufacturing process, the semiconductor manufacturing process, and the solar panel manufacturing process. Specific application links and related technical requirements for electronic wet chemicals in different fields are compared as follows:

Technical requirements for electronic wet chemicals	Panel display manufacturing process	Mainly used in thin film process cleaning, photolithography, development, etching and other links.	Highest technical requirements
Semiconductor manufacturing process	Mainly used in the front-end wafer manufacturing of integrated circuits and the back-end packaging and testing links.	High technical requirements
Solar panel manufacturing process	Mainly used for cleaning alkali production, diffusion to P-N junction, cleaning, etching and other links.	Relatively low technical requirements