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International Journal of Analytical Chemistry
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 690356, 10 pages
doi:10.1155/2012/690356
An Optimized Adsorbent Sampling Combined to Thermal Desorption GC-MS Method for Trimethylsilanol in Industrial Environments
1Headquarters of GemVax & KAEL Co., Ltd., 894 Tamnip-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-510, Republic of Korea
2R&D Institute of GemVax & KAEL Co., Ltd., 894 Tamnip-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-510, Republic of Korea
3School of Public Health, University of Memphis, 337 Robison Hall, Memphis, TN 38152, USA
4Center for Gas Analysis, Division of Metrology for Quality of Life, Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science, 1 Doryong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-340, Republic of Korea
Received 26 April 2012; Revised 23 June 2012; Accepted 30 June 2012
Academic Editor: D. Tsikas
Copyright © 2012 Jae Hwan Lee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Trimethylsilanol (TMSOH) can cause damage to surfaces of scanner lenses in the semiconductor industry, and there is a critical need to measure and control airborne TMSOH concentrations. This study develops a thermal desorption (TD)-gas chromatography (GC)-mass spectrometry (MS) method for measuring trace-level TMSOH in occupational indoor air. Laboratory method optimization obtained best performance when using dual-bed tube configuration (100 mg of Tenax TA followed by 100 mg of Carboxen 569), n-decane as a solvent, and a TD temperature of 300°C. The optimized method demonstrated high recovery (87%), satisfactory precision (<15% for spiked amounts exceeding 1 ng), good linearity (), a wide dynamic mass range (up to 500 ng), low method detection limit (2.8 ng for a 20-L sample), and negligible losses for 3-4-day storage. The field study showed performance comparable to that in laboratory and yielded first measurements of TMSOH, ranging from 1.02 to 27.30 , in the semiconductor industry. We suggested future development of real-time monitoring techniques for TMSOH and other siloxanes for better maintenance and control of scanner lens in semiconductor wafer manufacturing.