Patent 7524383 was granted and assigned to Tokyo Electron on April, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method and system for passivating a processing chamber is provided, whereby the processing chamber is exposed to one or more cycles of citric acid, or nitric acid. The processing chamber is fabricated, for example, from stainless steel. Each cycle may be performed at a pressure greater than atmospheric pressure, or a temperature greater than 20 degrees centigrade, or both.