Standards Program Powers Up
By James Amano, SEMI
SEMI F47, Specification for Semiconductor Processing Equipment Voltage Sag Immunity, widely adopted across the industry, is the governing standard that defines voltage sag test levels and requirements for semiconductor tools. The standard has been implemented by essentially all semiconductor tool vendors and is now required by almost all fabs world-wide. Since its initial publication, SEMI F47 has helped the industry avoid hundreds of millions of dollars of fab and tool downtime. However, fabs still occasionally suffer downtime due to voltage sag events, so SEMI recently organized a webinar to gather the industry to discuss power quality issues.
Another issue with power is consumption – too much of it. Large semiconductor fabs can devour electricity at a clip of 100 megawatts per hour. Fabs use electricity to power HVAC, run cooling water, and for basic infrastructure, but the vast majority of electricity is gobbled up by semiconductor manufacturing process tools and their sub-fab support equipment such as vacuum pumps and abatement systems. The semiconductor industry is now increasingly adopting a “smart idle” approach using SEMI Standards, to reduce utility consumption when wafers are not being processed. To familiarize Korea industry with these Standards, leaders from the Energy Saving Equipment Communication Task Force recently put on a webinar to introduce major concepts.
The final power-related activity we take a look at this month focuses on cooling water. SEMI S23, Guide for Conservation of Energy, Utilities and Materials Used by Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment, is widely used in our industry to measure energy consumption of equipment. A new revision provides guidance for tower-cooled cooling water, where heat is removed through a cooling tower system, rather than via a refrigeration system which reduces energy consumption.
Additional efforts are underway around the globe, throughout the year; watch this space for updates, or better yet, get in touch with your local Standards staff and get involved!
Standards Watch
SEMI
www.semi.org
June 3, 2021