Linde’s on-site fluorine to assist Tokyo Electron’s drive for lower environmental impact

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA: As part of Linde’s on-going commitment to deliver more sustainable electronics manufacturing, Linde Electronics, a business area of The Linde Group, announced that it will install an on-site fluorine generator at Tokyo Electron’s (TEL) Nirasaki R&D facility fabrication plant in Japan to support TEL’s processes and operations.

The Linde Group is a leading global gases and engineering company. Tokyo Electron Limited is a leading global supplier of semiconductor and flat panel display (FPD) production equipment. All of TEL's semiconductor and FPD production equipment product lines maintain high market shares in their respective segments through a global network of approximately 90 locations in 15 countries across the US, Europe, and Asia.

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with Tokyo Electron to further develop and extend the range of semiconductor applications for fluorine, and to help customers improve productivity and lower costs with less impact on the environment,” said Carl Jackson, head of fluorine business for Linde Electronics. “Tokyo Electron’s thermal LPCVD1 furnaces have used on-site generated fluorine for many years now at a range of production sites worldwide to reduce costs and improve safety and process control.”

Linde has recently installed and received orders for onsite fluorine capability at major semiconductor manufacturing sites for LPCVD applications. It has also seen increasing numbers of customers adopt on-site fluorine as a more productive and energy-efficient alternative to nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) for the cleaning of PECVD2 chambers for TFT-LCD and PV manufacturing – due to concerns over the very high global warming potential of NF3 and potential legislation that could restrict its use. In 2010, Linde customers were able to reduce their CO2 emissions by more than 250,000 tons with the use of on-site fluorine.

The Linde Generation-F on-site fluorine generator has been through extensive third-party safety evaluations and Linde has supplied and operates more than 30 Generation-F systems worldwide to meet the semiconductor, display and photovoltaic industries’ chamber cleaning needs.

Linde offers electronics customers around the world an extensive selection of high purity gases, related products, services and technical solutions for research and development through to large-scale production.