Thursday, February 15, 2007

Engineering plastics improve semiconductors

Many semiconductor manufacturers have recently raised concerns over the availability or extremely long lead times for engineering plastics, but a reeadily available material offers better performance.

Victrex continues to make strategic investments in its supply chain, technical and market support, which enable it to offer readily available high performance materials to customers anywhere in the world. These investments are particularly appealing to semiconductor fabs who are currently facing issues over the availability of other engineering plastics. This positions Victrex and the Victrex PEEK family of products as ideal solutions for end users seeking stable supplies of high quality, high performance materials.

Many fabs have recently raised concerns over the availability or extremely long lead times for engineering plastics (such as certain PPS grades) for use in CMP (chemical mechanical planarization) retaining rings.

Victrex PEEK offers proven superior performance in these applications.

Victrex currently supplies Victrex PEEK polymer to a range of wafer fabrication facilities across the world, including facilities in Europe, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, through a network of fabricators.

'We've been using Victrex PEEK polymer for the rings for a number of years and our customers are very pleased with the results,' said Bill Kalenian, engineering project manager at Strasbaugh.

'Victrex PEEK polymer is widely acknowledged as one of the premier high-performance thermoplastic materials for CMP rings because of its unique range of properties including inherent purity, strength, chemical resistance, and wear resistance.

Because Victrex PEEK polymer can be machined to extremely tight tolerances and is compatible with process components such as slurries, it has proven ideal for CMP rings, affording more wafer passes during fabrication - resulting in lower downtime and lower cost per wafer.' Strasbaugh purchases the Victrex PEEK polymer blanks from CDI Seals in Humble, Texas, USA.

* test results Revealed - 'One of the key drivers in this area is developing better, longer-wearing CMP rings to match the advancing performance of other critical CMP equipment consumables that complement the CMP head,' said John Walling, Victrex Americas semiconductor manager.

'Materials used in CMP rings in the past have included PPS, but wear tests reveal that CMP rings made from Victrex PEEK polymer have a useful lifetime of up to 2.5 times when compared to PPS.

At Victrex, we are strongly aware of the need for compatible long-life parts and are continuing to develop our materials in line with these technology advances.' Walling continued: 'In the semiconductor sector and in particular CMP retaining rings, our high performance polyaryletherketone material is often the difference between process success and failure.' He said: 'We have customers in the United States and Asia that have switched from PPS to Victrex PEEK polymer because of our application expertise and the product high performance.

Victrex PEEK polymer-based CMP rings enable more wafer passes during fabrication, resulting in lower downtime, and lower cost per wafer.' * Victrex's supply chain strategy - 'The importance of the security of supply in the semiconductor sector cannot be underestimated,' said Blair Souder, commercial director at Victrex.

'It's essential that semiconductor fabs have the material they need when they need it.

Wafer fabs are 24x7 facilities that need a constant supply of high quality, batch-consistent materials.

If a material is unavailable, the cost of delays is immeasurable.

It's not only that the wafer is delayed, but the subsequent effect in the consumer market as the end-product release date is pushed back is often critical.' Assurance of supply and investing ahead of demand has always been part of Victrex's business strategy.

The company is self-sufficient in the manufacture and supply of both Victrex PEEK polymer and its key monomers.

Victrex has made significant investments in two key components of its supply chain.

First, Victrex has backward integrated its raw material supply chain to better control quality and availability for its polymerization facilities.

This was achieved primarily by acquiring, and subsequently upgrading, these facilities.

Second, the company has continually added capacity ahead of demand to ensure a continual supply to customers.

The most recent investment is another Victrex PEEK polymer plant, currently under construction, which will bring the company's total capacity to more than 4,200 tons.

These investments allow Victrex to better control supply, costs, and quality, and ensure availability to customers.