Nitrogen trifluoride chamber clean is used to provide fluorion or nitrogen tri fluoride source.
Nitrogen trifluoride is a colorless , stable, and toxic gas which has been used as a fluorine source for high energy chemical lasers, it is prepared by fluorine because it is easy to handling at ambient
temperature.
Nitrogen trifluoride also used in the fluorination of fluorocarbon olefins.
In semiconductor fabrication, nitrogen trifluoride is usefull for plasma or cleaning of CVD reactors.
NF3 is also a selective reagent for silicon dioxide etching.
Nitrogen trifluoride used well with tungsten silicide, and the tungsten produced by CVD.
NF3 has been considered as generally preferable substitute for sulfur hexafluoride or per fluoro carbons such as hexa fluoro ethane, the process utilization of the chemicals applied in plasma processes is typically below 20 %.
So some of the PFCs and NF3 also escape into the atmosphere.
Modern gas abatement systems can reduce such emissions.
NF3 is a greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential 17,200 times greater than that of CO2 when compared over a 100 year period.
Its GWP place it second only to SF6 in the group of Kyoto-recognised greenhouse gases, NF3 also is not currently included in that grouping.
It has an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 740 years, same as other work suggests a slightly shorter lifetime of 550 years.
NF3 has a high GWP, for a long time which radiative forcing in the Earth's atmosphere to be small.
