Semiconductors

Applied Materials technologists are featured in the cover story of the current issue of Solid State Technology speaking to how energy consumption and the resulting carbon footprint can be reduced more than 20 percent in customer subfabs.  To read the article, click here.

Lots of innovation in the semiconductor industry goes towards making chips more energy-efficient. Less attention is paid to lowering the carbon footprint of the chip manufacturing process itself.Now, Applied's engineers have developed a smart technology that conserves resources by synchronizing the process tools in the fab with their support systems in the subfab. The new technology can reduce CO2 emissions for a CVD[1] chip processing system by 220,000 pounds annually[2]. When you consider that a modern fab may have more than 200 tools that could use this “green” solution, the total opportunity to lower the carbon footprint becomes quite impressive.

 When something goes wrong with a process system, manufacturers need immediate help. Thanks to the internet, there’s often no need to get on a plane when you can use a humble web browser to peer inside machinery located thousands of miles away. Using Applied Materials’ remote access capability, the company expects to avoid enough travel to save more than 650,000 pounds of CO2 emissions this year alone.

EE Times published an excellent, in-depth overview of the Light Emitting Diode (LED) industry in the September 21 Special Edition. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the fast growing LED market. This survey article is unique in that it is only available in the EE Times on-line reader format so you must click on the link when connected to the internet.

Applied Materials has sponsored the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, but is also lending its technical and monetary support to two California schools that teamed together for this year’s contest, Santa Clara University and the California College of the Arts. Their entry, Refract House, is a “zero-energy” house that will compete in a number of challenges on the National Mall in October.