News Article
CEA-Leti and Edwards collaborate for energy efficiency in the subfab
Co-development demonstrated the efficiency of a system controller
CEA-Leti, a European research and development institute in micro and nanotechnology, and Edwards, supplier of vacuum technology and abatement system, have announced that they have demonstrated the efficiency of a system controller to indirectly monitor the activity of the process tool and put in ‘idle’ mode its sub systems, vacuum pumps and abatement system, during the non process time: to save energy and natural resources.
CEA-Leti is involved in sustainability and green microelectronics. They observed that vacuum pumps and abatement systems in their subfab had the same consumption of energy whatever the working state of the process tools, since there is generally no direct communication on the tool status with the subfab.
Edwards collaborated with the CEA-Leti from January 2010, on a one year co-development program to develop a controller system capable of monitoring indirectly the status of the process tool so as to provide a signal for idle mode to the process pumps and abatement system.
Edwards’ latest-generation pumps and abatement systems are specifically designed to maximize energy savings by allowing process tools or factory automation systems to automatically switch among various low energy (Green Mode) or high performance operating modes to match the real time requirements of the process.
The co-developed system in CEA-Leti uses information from both the load lock and process pumps to determine the process status of the tool and can provide a signal for idle mode control to the subfab abatement equipment with configurable thresholds and wait times. The system was tested with success on two tools at CEA-Leti to check the reliability and record the energy saving. During a low activity period an energy saving of 75 percent of fuel and water on the abatement system was recorded.
