Safety Considerations in Building Ultra-High Vacuum Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition System for Low Temperature Group IV Epitaxy

A state-of-the-art chemical vapor deposition tool has been designed and built at the Photovoltaics Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering in the Engineering Research Center for depositing epitaxial films of group IV elements and their alloys. Due to the use of extremely toxic and flammable/pyrophoric gases safety and process integrity was built into the design right from the get go. College and University safety committees as well as external advisors were used throughout planning and building stages. Standard operating procedures (SOP) and travelers have been developed for various procedures and safety-training documents have been produced for proper training of new students and researchers. This lab is expected to be a model for new equipment building and acquisition at the University.