[Const-me]

I don't have any experience working in that industry.

But based on what I know, modern ICs require exceptional levels of purity of the materials. A single atom can ruin a transistor, and therefore the complete chip.

AFAIK the methods you mentioned aren't sensitive enough to detect individual atoms in barrels of stuff. E.g. ICP-MS detects 1E-15 concentrations, but in absolute numbers, 1E15 molecules is only 1.66e-9 mole, e.g. for iron (55.8g/mole), it translates to 1E+10 defects per kg of stuff. Way too many.

[twtw]

> and therefore the complete chip.

Most semiconductor companies bin chips based on how broken they are. GPUs, for example, frequently have different skus with the same chip differentiated by how many processors are broken (and thus disabled).

[dchichkov]

Wouldn't you be able to run the test multiple times and increase your sensitivity to an arbitrary level? Too expensive?

[lostmyoldone]

Studied a fair bit of chemistry, but not a pro, so this is only a rough outline.

A lot of chemical test equipment use semiconductor sensors of some kind - optical or otherwise - and most likely the sensitivity limit is simply the noise floor of the sensors. In good instruments they tend use good, or amazing detectors but they are still operating at the noise floor, or sometimes even below.

So running tests again doesn't really help sensitivity, for that you would most likely have to use some chemical process that amplifies the effect of the contaminants you are looking for. Hence the problem of having to know what to lool for in validating new chemicals, if you need ultra pure chemicals.