STMicroelectronics Inaugurates New 8 in.-200mm- Wafer Fab in Rousset
The new Rousset fab uses state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques, including the innovative "mini-environment/isolation technology". This concept was developed to ensure that the increasingly stringent air quality requirements of each future new technology generation can be met without escalating financial and environmental costs for air purification. In the mini-environment approach, each stage in the production process takes place in a localized environment, with wafers transported between these "mini-environments" in hermetically sealed boxes. Robots perform wafer transfer and handling operations. In this way, the air in each mini-environment can be economically maintained at a level around one thousand times purer than in conventional cleanrooms, while simultaneously allowing a dramatic reduction in the frequency of air re-circulation in the cleanroom.
"Mini-environment technology will be mandatory for the next generation of 12-in. fabs but it has today reached the stage where it offers financial and environmental benefits for 8-in. fabs, said Laurent Bosson, corporate vice president, Central Front-end Manufacturing, who noted that in addition to providing higher air quality for a lower energy cost and fast manufacturing ramp-up, the elimination of human wafer handling improves yields by removing a possible source of contamination and misrouting. "The same isolation technology will be deployed in ST's other new 8-in. fabs, currently under construction in Singapore and Italy," Laurent Bosson added.
Occupying 19,900 m2, the new fab is built on a 20-hectare site adjacent to ST's existing 6-in. fab, thereby capitalizing on the accumulated know-how of the existing site as well as on the excellent relationships ST has built up with equipment, materials and service suppliers, at a local level as well as international. The facility will focus on advanced digital circuits and non-volatile memories and, with the 6-in. Rousset fab, will be the main source for microcontroller-based smartcard chips, for which ST is a recognized market leader.
The first logic devices were successfully processed in 0.25 micron HCMOS-7 technology in April 2000 and the fab is currently producing around ten different products for applications such as data storage, TV set-top boxes and Digital Consumer equipment. New flash memory solutions for the cellular phone market, developed in ST's Agrate R&D center, are currently being processed, and will be qualified in third quarter of 2000. The new fab will also produce, as of 2001, ST's award-winning SmartJ family of smartcard chips, made in 0.18 µ technology.
The design of the new Rousset plant is fully in line with ST's corporate commitment to achieving environmental neutrality. For example, some 45% less energy is required to manufacture an 8-in. wafer than a 6-in. wafer at the Rousset site, which also includes a state-of-the-art waste water treatment plant cofinanced together with the town of Rousset and other local partners. Manufacturing waste is already recovered and reused or processed at approved waste disposal centers and by 2002, the Rousset site will have eliminated all dumping of innocuous waste. A strenuous pollution abatement effort had resulted in noise pollution below 50dB(A) at the site's boundary and contamination levels well below the legal requirements.
Edited by Winn Hardin, Managing Editor