Hi g h ligh t s

TEL’s Business
TEL is striving to obtain accurate estimates of and then reduce the environmental burden
and safety hazards posed by its business activities.

Reducing Environmental Burden and Safety Hazards in Each Stage
This page describes the full course of development of EXPEDIUS, one of TEL’s core products which we will use as a typicalexample of an auto wet station. The figure below shows the process, from the first meeting to discuss specifications to theoperation of the actual equipment as it produces semiconductors on our customer sites. The figure highlights approaches taken
for reducing the environmental burden and safety hazards. Those must be considered essential factors throughout this process.

TEL

2 Process assessment

Development and Manufacturingof Semiconductor Production Equipment

Following the customer’s specifications, we test andobserve the operation of the equipment while it is performing the semiconductor production processes the customer requires. We seek to reduce the amount of purewater used when EXPEDIUS cleans wafers with fluoric
acid and alkaline chemicals (see p. 20).

1 Specifications meeting
Requests from customers concerning semiconductor production equipment mention
more than cost and delivery schedule – customers are also deeply concerned about
throughput (for productivity) and yield (forquality). In addition, there are increasing environmental and safety requirements recently.

4 Procurement
Some parts of our equipment are standardized components,
but most are special-order. TEL believes in practicing green
procurement from suppliers of components used in the EXPEDIUS. This includes procuring components that contain nolead or other harmful substances (see p. 20 - 21).

* EXPEDIUS is developed and manufactured at the Saga plant of Tokyo Electron Kyushu Ltd.

10TOKYO ELECTRON Environmental and Social Report 2005

The auto wet stations handled by our Surface Preparation Systems (SPS) BU clean
wafers with pure water and a variety of chemicals. These remove particles and contaminations from the surface of the wafer while it is processed into semiconductors. The cutting-edge auto wet station EXPEDIUS reduces the amount of chemicals used and its highdegree of product standardization allows shorter delivery and start-up times. It has been
well received by our customers.

Masaaki HataGeneral ManagerSurface Preparation Systems BU,
Tokyo Electron Limited

Customer’s facility(a semiconductor production plant)

3 Design
We design our equipment according to the specifications given by
the customer and the country in which the equipment is to be used.
The effort we make in this stage to accommodate environmental
and safety concerns pays off later in lower burden imposed by
the equipment. EXPEDIUS offers a much smaller“footprint” than its previous models, saving space inthe customer’s facility. Future goals are to continue
reducing the amount of lead in the equipment and tofurther standardize the specifications (see p. 20).

7 Start-up and inspection
The equipment is started up in the customer’s plant. It is essential
to follow procedures – our motto is “Safety first” – when handlingthe dangerous substances used in this equipment. Several piecesof equipment are brought into the customer’s plant. Sometimes,
start-up must be carried out on a 24-hour time schedule, withteams trading shifts, as necessary.

6 Shipping and delivery
We have begun using low-emissions trucks for deliveries to domestic customers. For overseas customers, equipment is packed in wooden frames and isusually air-delivered. Scrap lumber from the wooden
frames is recycled and other measures are taken tominimize the environmental burden in this stage.

5 Manufacturing
An important feature of our units and modules is how easy
they are to integrate and to dock with each other; this reduces
the environmental burden involved in assembly and inspection. The wastes generated during those stages are all recycled. Pure water is recirculated and cleaned in the Saga plant ,reducing our water usage and lengthening life of components
used to produce pure water (see p. 23 - 24). Another important factor to consider is safety (see p. 26 - 27).

8 Production of semiconductors
Semiconductor production equipment is operated 24 hours aday for the constant production of semiconductors. Customers allow only brief stops of the equipment for maintenance,
so it must be possible to perform all maintenance work properly in a very limited time. We are also keenly aware that,
according to life cycle assessment, a great portion of the total
environmental burden of our equipment occurs during semiconductor production. Reducing that burden is a top priority.

About the auto wet station EXPEDIUS: Very fine impurities such as particles and dust cause fatal damage to semiconductors, which contain extremely fine circuitry on their surfaces. From the time the wafers are firstbrought into clean rooms until production of the devices is completed, they are cleaned with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, fluoric acid, pure water and other substances before and after every single process in orderto remove the unwanted substances. Different kinds of cleanings are required before and after the different processes, so the versatile auto wet station EXPEDIUS is capable of a variety of cleaning methods.

TOKYO ELECTRON Environmental and Social Report 2005

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