Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, a company specializing in chemical mechanical planarization technology for the global semiconductor industry, has received a volume order for its IC 1000 line of CMP pads from a leading memory manufacturer.

 

The CMP pads will be produced entirely at the Rohm and Haas CMP Technologies Asia Pacific Manufacturing and Technical Center at Hsinchu in Taiwan. The memory manufacturer will use the IC 1000 pads in its advanced process technologies at several Asian sites.

 

Rohm and Hass says that the order represents an important milestone for its facility in Hsinchu, which became fully certified and operational in its front end polymerization process in December 2008. Rohm and Haas's IC1000 and IC1000 AT pads and Visionpads have been sampling from the Hsinchu facility since then, and are in the qualification stage with numerous manufacturers in the region.

 

The Hsinchu Site was completed in phases to meet increasing demand for 200mm and 300mm CMP pad requirements in Asia. The first phase consisted of pad finishing operations which became fully functional in March of 2007. The facility has received ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification and is the only company within the semiconductor industry in Taiwan to earn the Green Building Award from the Taiwanese government, recognizing it for daily energy saving, CO2 emission and waste reduction, and water resource conservation. The Hsinchu facility has since been qualified by major logic and memory semiconductor customers in the region.

 

The pad finishing operations have been fully functional for two years and Rohm and Haas has multiple existing customers for this capability. The facility also maintains a local inventory of finished pads to support customers in the region and the plant has an assured supply chain, with contingency back-up supplies available from Delaware in the U.S., and Mie, Japan.

 

The Hsinchu manufacturing plant's operations are identically matched to the company's processes of record at its Newark, Delaware facility. Product properties are validated against the Delaware plant's standards, and both facilities employ the same quality systems.

 

The Hsinchu Manufacturing and Technical Center was created to support the growing Asia region and includes pad manufacturing as well as an applications lab, and delivers local technical service and sales support. The facility will support sales and customer service centers in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.