Environmental protection of the semiconductor industry
As people's environmental awareness increases, so does the level of attention to environmental protection issues. We only have one planet. How to protect our living environment while developing the economy has become an urgent topic. Reduce the burden on the global environment, ensure safety and health and protect the environment. Saving energy to save resources, recycling waste, reducing waste, and managing the discharge of chemical substances have become the consensus of people to protect the environment. In conjunction with the promotion of ISO14000 certification, and the goal of building a 21st century green factory, people have made active efforts in environmental protection. The particularity of the semiconductor manufacturing industry has made various industries pay more attention to environmental protection issues.
Prevention of the global warming effect
Preventing the global warming effect of the earth has become a hot topic that has been widely concerned in recent years. In the semiconductor manufacturing industry, there are two main problems:
1. Energy saving
The semiconductor industry's manufacturing equipment, air-conditioning equipment, cold/heat source equipment, and the use of pure water, liquid supply, exhaust gas, gas, electrical equipment, etc., operate continuously 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and consume a lot of energy. From the type of energy consumption, electricity and energy accounts for about 85%, and energy sources such as fuel and steam account for 15%. From the use of power consumption, the pre-process manufacturing equipment is about 40%-50%, air conditioning, cold/heat source equipment is about 30%, and other auxiliary equipment is about 25%.
Saving energy, reducing costs, and improving product competitiveness are tasks that companies have been implementing for a long time. On the one hand, through the technological transformation of existing equipment, significant economic benefits can be achieved, but on the other hand, the investment in semiconductor factories is now Huge, the development of technology is extremely fast. As a semiconductor industry, the future research direction of energy conservation should be made in the following aspects:
Manufacturing equipment: improve energy conversion efficiency and thus improve energy utilization to achieve energy saving purposes; reduce power consumption in equipment standby state, correspondingly reduce air conditioning load to achieve energy saving purposes; reduce equipment exhaust capacity The exhaust gas treatment load is reduced to achieve energy saving purposes; the installation area of the equipment is reduced to control the area of the purification zone to achieve energy saving.
Auxiliary equipment: miniaturization of equipment; reduction of area of high-purification area to reduce power consumption of air circulation to save energy; use of air-conditioning system with low pressure loss; use of new insulation materials to promote smoothing of power consumption; Use carbon dioxide generated during the process of reducing energy use.
Product development and process design: developing high value-added products; cost-oriented product development (reducing chip area, process standardization, shortening design cycle); increasing production (increasing output rate, reducing engineering count, and shortening test time).
The development of the semiconductor industry itself has become high-performance, light, thin, and low-energy. Contributed to the direction of energy conservation for machinery and equipment. We look forward to the introduction of new equipment for energy conservation.
2. Reduce PFC
PFC (PREFLUOROCARBON) is mainly used in CVD engineering for semiconductor manufacturing, as a cleaning gas, and as a process gas in dry etching engineering. PFC has been included in the reduction of emissions due to its ability to destroy the Earth's ozone layer. Most of them are not directly processed and discharged directly into the atmosphere, and reducing the emission of PFC is an important issue facing the semiconductor manufacturing industry in the future.
Future research directions will focus on the following aspects:
Development of a discharged PFC recycling system (involving how to effectively and cost-effectively recycle, separate, and refine PFC); development of new PFC processing technologies (converting PFC to non-greenhouse gas emissions) ); development of alternative gases (replacement of gases currently used with gases with a small global warming coefficient; development of new processes (research of new etching processes).
Japan’s plan to control the emission of PFCs in the electronics industry, announced in April 1998, proposes a reduction target based on 1995. By 2010, the emissions of each project will be reduced by 70% for the new line. The line is cut by 10%. The United States has also set a goal for the recovery rate of PFC used in the semiconductor industry. Here, domestic industry players are invited to pay attention to this issue early.