Today’s most advanced fabs have opportunities for energy savings and reductions in greenhouse gases. In many cases, taking advantage of the opportunities requires close collaboration with equipment and subsystem providers to achieve optimum results, but the payback can be significant and swift.

Texas Instruments (TI) has been able to realize more than $150M in energy savings at its 300 mm fab in Richardson, Texas, through the completion of just five “big ticket items,” including space efficiency ($44M saved), electrical reductions in system size and complexity ($42M), chemical and gas improvements ($32M), mechanical engineering ($22M), and changes in the water plant ($10M). In addition, TI will save $1M in operating costs in the first full year and, at full build-out, more than $4M per year because of a 20% energy reduction, 35% water-use reduction and 50% emissions reduction.

Engineers at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) sites worldwide have executed dozens of projects that improve energy efficiency. Some of the most prominent successes:

• Idling air handlers in administrative areas during low occupancy periods in Dresden, Germany, saves ~9.3 GWh/yr.
• Replacement of a large electrical incoming air heater with a more efficient heat transfer fluid system in Dresden saves ~2.8 GWh/yr.
• Upgrading old chillers with a more efficient system in Sunnyvale, Calif., saves ~2.1 GWh/yr.

The most prominent energy use and saving opportunities impacting the industry involve process tools and vacuum pumps. Process tools account for ~40% of the total energy consumption in fabs today, and vacuum pumps ~52%. Reducing energy consumption in vacuum pumps is difficult, involving complex interrelations between compression, pumping speed, inlet and outlet pressure, and other variables. Also, newer semiconductor manufacturing technologies, such as low-k and high-k processes and low-temperature plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), are increasing pump power requirements.Pump power consumption could be reduced by as much as 50% if appropriate technologies were used and all variables were optimized, representing a major untapped opportunity for energy savings in today’s fabs.

Among the challenges facing fab managers is the difficulty in synchronizing processes, tools and abatement systems for energy efficiency because of intellectual property (IP) concerns.

These and other energy and resource conservation issues will be discussed in a workshop during SEMICON West, organized jointly by SEMI and the International Sematech Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI). The workshop, “Energy Conservation in the Semiconductor Industry: Obstacles and Opportunities for Energy Reduction in Equipment and Fabs,” will be held Tuesday, July 15, at 2-5 p.m. The seminar will examine obstacles and opportunities for energy reduction when operating semiconductor manufacturing equipment in the fab.

This workshop will be delivered in two parts. In “Success and Solutions,” formal presentations from equipment suppliers, device manufacturers and others in the semiconductor industry supply chain will address driving factors, determinants of energy use, obstacles and opportunities, and examples of success and failure. “Collaboration and the Road Ahead” will consist of a roundtable discussion on how to address and build consensus and collaboration on energy reduction opportunities.

For more information and to register for the SEMICON West workshop, visit www.semiconwest.org.