Selective water vapor cryopumping through argon

A selective cryopumping process for water vapor control takes place in vacuum systems for web coating or plasma operations, such as sputter deposition, etching, etc. Excessive water vapor content will affect the quality of the processes and final products. These vacuum systems typically operate at pressures corresponding to transitional or viscous flow regimes, and water vapor cryopumping is highly limited by diffusion of water vapor molecules through a noncondensable process gas (argon, air). An analytical model was created to describe water vapor condensing process through a noncondensable gas diffusion barrier. The model accounts for the collisions of different molecules by means of Boltzmann kinetic equations for two-component rarefied gas. It was assumed that water vapor content is about three orders of magnitude lower than that of the noncondensable gas (argon). Cryopumping process was analyzed for two simplified cases when water vapor source and cryosurface are parallel plates and coaxial cylinders. The calculations were conducted for different water vapor outgassing rates and argon pressures ranging from 0.5 × 10 − 3 to 20.0 × 10 − 3 torr . At certain parameters a strongly nonlinear distribution of water vapor pressure and density versus distance between source and cryosurface was obtained. At high argon pressures an increase of water vapor pressure was observed near an outgassing surface. The results were used for calculation of water vapor cryopumping rates.