DAS addresses semiconductor-industry environmental concerns
Environmental concerns were front-and-center at SEMICON West earlier this month. As an example, Dr. Horst Reichardt, chairman, president, and CEO of DAS Environmental Expert GmbH, and Dr. Guy Davies, director of the company's gas business unit, were on hand to provide an overview of their company and to preview a new product introduced last week.
Dr. Reichardt described DAS as an environmental technology company focused on waste abatement in the semiconductor manufacturing and related industries. The company's goal is to provide sustainable solutions that minimize resource use, promote uptime, and protect the environment. The family-owned business was founded in 1991 in Dresden. It has facilities in the US, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Argentina.
The company provides both wastewater and waste-gas treatment—the latter was the focus at SEMICON West. Dr. Davies noted that the company can handle condensable, flammable, corrosive, reactive, toxic, and pyrophoric gases and fine dust as well as provide monitoring. The company's portfolio supports burn/wet treatment, electrostatic treatment, thermal/wet treatment, oxidation/pyrolysis, and wet treatment.
Dr. Davies described STYRAX as the company's flagship point-of-use burn/wet waste-gas treatment system, which can treat waste gases from semiconductor, photovoltaic, and LED processes; it's available in inline and backup versions. It offers improved PFC abatement, reduced NOX emissions, and long maintenance intervals.
But the company was in particular highlighting its new SALIX scrubber system (formally introduced July 15), which Dr. Davies described as the world's first point-of-use system for gas abatement in single-wafer clean wet-bench semiconductor processes and as the only commercially available point-of-use scrubber system for removing waste-gas pollutants produced during wafer cleaning. The system employs a two-stage liquid-scrubbing process for chemical and physical absorption.
Dr. Davies said a SALIX system has been running successfully at a foundry based in Taiwan since January.
In related environmental news at SEMICON West, show sponsor SEMI presented the “SEMI Outstanding EHS [Environment, Health, and Safety] Achievement Award—Inspired by Akira Inoue” to Ajit Manocha, CEO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Read more about the award and about Manocha's SEMICON West keynote address here.