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October 2005 Semiconductor Safety Update

'Conforms to the Intent'– This task force working on the line item for SEMI S2 to clarify “Conforms to the Intent” did not return to ballot the last ballot cycle and is not intended to return to ballot the next cycle. The discussion in the fall meetings were simply to restrict the activity of this task force to clarifying how conforms to the intent is to be reported in SEMI S2 reports, by proposing modifications to section 8 of SEMI S2.

EHS Committee – Two new leaders of SEMI’s North American EHS Committee were elected during the fall meetings - Sean Larsen and Eric Sklar. After these results are officially confirmed by the NA RSC in the spring the will join Criag Ottesen and Chris Evanston (Earth Tech), as the leaders of this key standards committee.

ESAC Subcommittee – This subcommittee passed a motion to invite FM to come to the spring standards meeting and present on their new standard for semiconductor equipment. Their was real concern expressed in this discussion about this not being developed as a consensus standard but still being imposed on the industry. Although there were those that did not want to invite FM to discuss this standard, because they were concerned that this in some way this may be viewed as a SEMI endorsement.

SEMI S7 Third Party Qualifications – There was major discussion on the foundations of this revision effort. The conclusion was that this guideline should require third parties to provide information about their qualifications. However, it also concluded that no minimum qualifications should be set for either individual evaluators or their organizations. It was also concluded that no numeric or other type of rating system will be developed in this guideline. The intent of this revision effort is to provide a well defined set of information that third parties must provide about themselves to help both equipment manufactures and end users make informed decisions about their qualifications.

SEMI S7 Report Qualify – This task force decided not to start with all the material from the previous SEMI S7 on this topic and to start anew by defining the principles of a sound report. This was really the only conclusion reached during this meeting.

SEMI S3 Heated Chemical Bath – The revisions to this SEMI S3 guideline was passed during the fall 2005 meetings. This is the first change to SEMI’s heated chemical bath guideline in fourteen years. The 1991 version of this standard was badly out of date and in need of revision. This new version of SEMI S3 is a major rewrite of this document and it is strongly advised that manufacturers of heated chemical baths obtain a copy of it as soon as possible and start designing to it.