Technology with the Environment in Mind

Evaluation Process for Semiconductor Fabrication Materials that are Better for the Environment

PRECAUTIONARY POLICY

Thousands of chemicals have been developed and are used to manufacture the products we use in everyday life. Despite the widespread use of chemicals, until recently the prevailing thought was that exposure to most industrial chemicals was unlikely, especially outside the industrial environment. For years, regulatory policies toward such chemicals have presumed them to be safe with little or no information on their health implications. The U.S. EPA has found that even a basic level of toxicity information exists for less then ten percent of the approximate 2800 high-production-volume chemicals (those produced over one million pounds per year). The absence of information is often misinterpreted as evidence of safety. Growing evidence that some chemicals can potentially cause harm, and concern that current global chemical polices are not sufficient to predict or prevent potential harm to individuals or the environment, have led to major reforms in industrial chemical polices worldwide. The most prevalent perspective today is known as the Precautionary Principle, which in effect requires that precautionary action be taken before there is scientific certainty of cause and effect.

Seeking out and evaluating alternatives is preferred rather than asking what level of contamination is safe or economically optimal. The precautionary approach asks how to reduce or eliminate the hazard and considers all possible means of achieving that goal [2].

The precautionary perspective underscores a basic difference between hazard approach vs. risk approach. The first is absolute in terms of eliminating materials should they pose an "unacceptable" hazard. The risk approach evaluates whether or not a hazard will have an impact (e.g., human exposure) and determines how the impact can be mitigated.

"Copy Exactly!" Factory Strategy

Intel introduced its "Copy Exactly!" factory strategy in the mid-1980s and completed its adoption in 1996. Intel can credit "Copy Exactly!" with enabling the company to bring factories online quickly with high-volume practices already in place; hence, decreasing time to market and increasing production yields.

"Copy Exactly!" solves the problem of getting production facilities up to speed quickly by duplicating everything from the technology development facility to the volume-manufacturing factory. In particular, it means ensuring that the process devised at the development facility is fine-tuned not just for performance and reliability, but for high-volume production as well. (Background information on Intel's Copy Exactly! strategy can be found at [4].)

"Copy Exactly!" Versus Traditional Semiconductor Factory Strategy

In most semiconductor factories, equipment and processes used in research vary greatly from those used in high-volume manufacturing. At many companies, each new technology is brought to a technology development facility where a team of engineers precision-tune the process until it is perfected. Then the process is transferred to a high-volume manufacturing facility where a new set of engineers modifies the process so that it can be produced in large quantities.

The impact of Intel's Copy Exactly! policy on materials is that development and selection must occur much earlier in the technology development cycle, including the evaluation for Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) performance.

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