Jul 29 2008
Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, CMP Technologies, a leader and innovator in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) technology for the global semiconductor industry, today announced that it is increasing investments in its Asia-Pacific Pad Manufacturing Facility located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The investment is aimed at accelerating the company’s capacity expansion to meet the growing demand for CMP pads from semiconductor manufacturing customers in Asia. Fully operational and in production since March 2007, the Hsinchu plant has been qualified by major logic and memory semiconductor customers in the region.
The Hsinchu Facility was designed to allow for multiple phased expansions to meet the future demands for both 200 mm and 300 mm CMP pad requirements in Asia. The pad finishing operations have been fully functional since March of 2007. Complete pad manufacturing, including casting operations for the advanced VisionPad™ platform and the IC1000™ AT pad series, will be operational in early 2009. The Hsinchu Facility also maintains a local inventory of finished pads to further support customers in the region.
“Our Hsinchu Facility offers world-class, high-volume manufacturing capability for leading-edge pad technology, including our newest VisionPad and IC1000 AT pads for the most advanced manufacturing nodes,” explained Sam Shoemaker, president of Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, CMP Technologies. “The conversion to Hsinchu supply has been smooth and faster than originally anticipated. Customer qualifications of the facility are going extremely well, and we are well ahead of our original capacity expansion schedule.”
Cliff Chen, plant manager, Asia-Pacific Manufacturing Facility, added, “To keep pace with demand, our staff has grown faster than originally planned. We expect to employ over 200 people in Taiwan by the end of this year. These jobs represent a strong mix of talented local personnel, ranging from manufacturing staff and product technicians to advanced CMP applications and technical service engineers. We fully expect that opportunities at the Hsinchu plant will continue to grow as we expand and transfer new technologies to this state-of-the-art facility.”
Rohm and Haas’s CMP Technologies business is one of the original suppliers of CMP consumables, serving the semiconductor manufacturing industry since 1969. The company’s experience has enabled the development of a strong global infrastructure that delivers quality and consistency to customers worldwide. All of the company’s manufacturing facilities, including Hsinchu, are ISO 9001 certified, and adhere to Six-Sigma principles for all operations, including manufacturing, supply chain management, advanced research and development, CMP applications engineering, technical service and sales support.