Interview：Sam Shoemaker, Dow Electronic Materials
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Mr. Sam Shoemaker,
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Dow Electronic Materials’ achievement in Asian
Dow Electronic Materials has seen very strong growth in the first half of the year, which we expect to continue into Q3. Our business growth rates closely correlate with the semiconductor industry silicon area growth rates.
Consistent with the Si area growth rate, we have seen solid market growth across all of our product lines. While our pad growth has been in line overall silicon area growth, other product lines such as, our 193 immersion photo resists, BARCs and slurries, we have outpaced the market.
Globally over the past 2 years, we’ve seen our core semiconductor and interconnect customers build new facilities as well as add new capacity in the North American, European and Asia Pacific Regions. However, the capacity expansion and growth has been much faster in the Asia Pacific region. In addition, Dow has also continued to invest and grow new businesses such as flat panel display and advanced packaging which are focused in Asia Pacific. This combination of faster customer and new business growth in Asia Pacific has driven our Asia Pacific based sales from 66% of total sales in 2008 to more than 75% in 2010.
Taiwan is definitely a key market for Dow Electronic Materials and one in which we have made a significant investment. Dow has invested more than $70MM in our Hsinchu facility. In 2010 we continued to expand our manufacturing scale up in Hsinchu, which allowed us to reach a key manufacturing milestone -- over 50 percent of Dow’s hard CMP pads are now manufactured and shipped directly from Hsinchu. We have also continued to invest in both new slurry and lithography material formulation labs in our Taiwan Advanced Technology Center.
The way collaborate with customers to develop new technologies
Dow Electronic Materials works with a wide variety of different types of collaborations including with 1) universities and consortia, 2) equipment and tool manufacturers 3) other consumable/material manufacturers and 4) our customers. While all of these collaborations are important, Dow’s experience has been that the customer centered collaborations are the ones which really accelerate our platform development process and enable rapid and efficient mass customization.
How we work with our customers is at the heart of our collaborative efforts. We actually strive to begin working with customers early in the innovation process, sometimes as early as 3 to 5 years before a product is commercialized. During this period, we work with customers on problem definition and to identify key enablers and material requirements for next-generation devices to develop new platforms. Once platforms are defined, we then work with customers to understand the specific product and process performance requirements and to develop specific product formulations via rapid and efficient mass customization in the 1 to 3 year period prior to commercialization. One year prior to commercialization we really focus on material scale up and applications support.
Specifically, Dow has a number of confidential joint development agreements (JDAs) and technology engagements with leading semiconductor manufacturers around the world. One recent example we can comment on is our collaboration with IBM to develop next-generation pads and slurry for the 32/28 nm CMP copper process. This new process leverages innovations in Reactive Liquid (RL) slurry and pad technology to improve defectivity, planarity and lower overall Cost of Ownership. Together, combining Dow’s materials science and chemistry knowledge and IBM’s chemistry and device knowledge the two companies were able to develop this work in a shorter period of time.
How can materials providers collaborate with customers to overcome the manufacturing challenges in developing advanced nano process, 3D IC and MEMS technologies?
As mentioned earlier we have a number of collaborations but the most important ones are those with our customers. We engage with the customer throughout the innovation process from platform development through formulation scale-up and applications. Given current development timelines we’re already engaged with our customers for the litho and CMP processes below 20 nm, new TSV plating chemistries and planarization materials for 3D IC technologies and under fill materials for chip scale packaging technology.
Just in the semiconductor area we have a number of new innovations, including; new top coat free and negative tone developable 193 immersion photo resists and EUV photo resist for = 20 nm. In CMP, we also have new Reactive Liquid slurry technology as well as new pad materials for =28 nm. In Advanced packaging area, we have a number of new plating chemistries designed for higher efficiency and productivity in existing as well as new applications including TSV.
Sustainability at Dow Electronic Materials
Dow has outlined Sustainability Goals (see www.dow.com/sustainability) which offers a summary of progress on Dow's 2015 Goals and underscores the company's commitment to addressing energy, climate change and other world challenges. On June 16, Dow was added to the NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index for the first time. The NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index is made up of companies that have taken a leadership role in disclosing their carbon footprint, energy usage, water consumption, hazardous and non-hazardous waste, employee safety, workforce diversity, management composition and community investing. More information specifically about this is available Dow.com at http://news.dow.com/dow_news/corporate/2010/20100616a.htm.
Dow has a strong commitment to energy efficiency. The Company has reduced its energy intensity by 38 percent since 1990. Since 1994, the Company has saved over 1,700 trillion Btu of energy, enough to supply the residential electrical needs of the state of California for one year. During that time, Dow also reduced its absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20 percent – well beyond Kyoto targets. This has kept approximately 90 million metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere – a clear demonstration of the power of energy efficiency. The current percentage of sales from products with Highly Advantaged sustainable chemistry performance increased from 1.7 percent in 2008 to 3.4 percent in 2009, further reflecting the transformation of the Company.
Dow Electronic Materials also received two Sustainability awards from the government of Taiwan, the Green Building Award from the Interior Ministry and the Hsinchu Science Park Landscape Award from the Science Park Administration Office.
Taiwan’s Minister of the Interior recognized Dow’s Hsinchu Asia-Pacific Manufacturing and Technical Center for its long-term commitment to the environment. The facility was designed to incorporate features and practices which contribute to sustainability and promote a green environment. We received the award for achieving four out of nine indices assessed in Taiwan's Green Building program: 1) Daily Energy Saving; 2) CO2 Emission Reduction; 3) Water Resource; and 4) Waste Reduction. In 2007, Dow Electronic Materials was the first and only company within the semiconductor industry in Taiwan to earn the Green Building Award.
“Environmental stewardship and safety programs are core values at Dow, and we believe they are fundamental to meeting customer needs in the semiconductor industry,” said Shoemaker.
We also received the Hsinchu Science Park Landscape Award from the Science Park Administration Office in 2007. The company received the award from Lu Hsiu-Lien, vice president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) during the Science Park Landscape Award Day, an annual event for honoring the best landscape achievements within the Science Park community.
In CMP we have also developed a new pad technology and grooving that allows customers to utilize less slurry material, increasing material efficiency and reducing slurry consumption. Improved slurry delivery to the leading edge of the wafer leads to a 35 percent reduction in slurry consumption.
Dow's OLED (organic light emitting diodes) technology uses self-emitting materials, which means lower energy consumption. The materials operate at lower voltage for extended battery life and energy efficiency. OLED materials provide the brilliant color for OLED displays used in mobile applications and next- generation TVs.
In our semiconductor packaging business, Dow Electronic Materials has developed a lead-free alternative for bump plating known as SOLDERON™ Tin/Silver. Developing a replacement for lead alloys with the right material and meeting reliability requirements has been one of the packaging industry’s biggest challenges.
Exhibition at SEMICON Taiwan 2010
Dow’s theme at SEMICON Taiwan: Combining the power of Science and Technology … for Tomorrow’s Advances in Electronic Materials Today. We will be highlighting our lithography, CMP and advanced packaging materials during SEMICON Taiwan. The Semiconductor Technologies business will be promoting our latest VISIONPADTM Polishing Pads as well as a new slurry product at the show. We will also be displaying our immersion resists for 193 nm lithography and BARCs.
At SEMICON Taiwan we will be addressing the innovative business practices and a step change in collaboration between industry consortia, IC device manufacturers, tool and consumable manufacturing companies that will be required to enable the =18 nm technology nodes.
As semiconductor device manufacturers continue to advance the semiconductor road map, equipment and material suppliers must continue to work on multiple technology solutions over 2-4 technology nodes. Development costs continue to escalate beyond where equipment and material suppliers are able to generate a reasonable return on investment. In order to be successful at future nodes, consumable suppliers must employ a combination of early platform development with academia, industry consortia and central research. Equally important is the formation of strategic alliances with customers and tool suppliers to reduce costs and spread risk. New business relationships are the key to the industry’s future success and must be created to help distribute the risk in developing next generation technology and to protect Intellectual Property (IP) ensuring rewards for all.
While many technology companies have considered such changes to their development models in the past, we are now seeing the first signs of traction and the critical factors for success.
2010/09