*AV*--I would not be worried about what you have read in this article. As discussed many times before, the industry and technology keeps moving forward with advances. One of the major issues that is constantly being addressed is waste removal and waste reduction especially those of the more toxic nature.
As far as who will be hit the hardest in revenues, most of it will be transparent to the companies we discuss. The Sulfuric Acid, Nitric Acid, Hydrochloric Acid, Hydrogen Peroxide come from companies such as General Chemical, Ashland Chemical, Allied Chemical, Air Liquide Electronics, and some of the other MAJOR producers of these component chemicals. Sure, they do have semiconductor chemical divisions (due to the higher purity levels required)and some of them might be specialty houses, but they are insignificant to the overall business of most of these mega-companies. Add to this the already prevalent introduction and implementation of acid reprocessor systems that can recycle these acids, and you will see there is nothing really much to get upset about. Acid Chemical waste reduction leads to acid chemical neutralization reduction and reduction in the bottles that these are shipped in. Overall, you get a net GOOD GUY all around (exceot for the suppliers of these acids) since it lowers overall wafer processing cost, waste treatment costs, waste disposal costs and more than likely, reduces defects on the wafers for the end users.
The solvent cleaners mentioned to remove photoresist from the wafers are the products of some specialty niche companies like JT Baker, Olin Microelectronic Materials, Clariant Corporation, Ecosys(part of ATMI), Shipley Corp, EKC technology along with a host of others. These companies will be hit a little bit harder as their mainstream products become obsoleted or replaced by more effective and less costly alternatives. I do not think many of these companies rely heavily on these sales and it would not surprise me to see it as one of the lower margin product offerings.
ATMI does not deal in these "generic" acids or solvents that are going to be minimized or eliminated, with the exception of Ecosys. The mainstream chemicals provided by ATMI are much higher margin and in much greater demand. I do not mean to totally discount the Ecosys jeopardy to ATMI's bottom line, but it will not be a monumental issue. I think there are other sectors that ATMI will expand in to make up for the slack.
Most of the chemicals we spoke about above are either placed in temperature baths or autopmated cleaning systems from companies like Semitool or FSI International. These cleaning systems might be in jeopardy but I do not see them standing idly by. They could very easily accommodate this change in processing with their existing equipment or at least modify it for the lower priced units. As you remove the toxic and corrosive chemicals from the process, these tools require less costly safety precautions to contain chemical spills or accidents.
With this said, please do not think this is something new. I have spoken about the chemical reprocessor for awhile, I have been very vocal on the topic of chemical waste reduction, and I have already spoken about the "cryogenic CO2" cleaning system developed by IBM which FSI was to commercialize. We have also discussed the YILD and CFMT portion of the entire cleaning process.
The final thing to discuss is the water issue. Almost every cleaning process mentioned above requires the acid or solvent to be rinsed off the wafers once they come out of the chemical cleaning process. Most of the time these wafers are rinsed to resistivity or overly rinsed to ensure all traces of the residual chemicals are removed. There are literally dozens of cleaning operations used to process wafers through the manufacturing cycle. The amount of DI used is astronomical, as the INTC reference indicates. Cost of producing DI water is also expensive. Anything to minimize DI water usage would also be a major cost savings for IC producers.
It seems this High pressure CO2 process is either an improvement over the cryogenic process (btw-this process is used by the Air Force to strip paint off jets) or is an end around to avoid a patent issue. Then again, it might be a combination of both that allows for the easily implementation of the process with fairly standard equipment from suppliers like SMTL or FSII.
Hope this helps to shed some light on this story.
Andrew |
