Evonik Industries, one of the world’s leading specialty chemicals companies, announced that it has started construction of a new hexachlorodisilane (HCDS) production plant in Rheinfelden, Germany.
The production will commence in the latter half of 2012. Hexachlorodisilane is a silicon-based raw material utilized by the semiconductor industry to produce high-storage, efficient and low-cost memory chips, called "flash memory.” These chips are embedded in electronic devices like USB sticks, MP3 players, digital cameras and smart phones. HCDS is marketed by Evonik under the Siridion brand.
The new facility will help the company to further strengthen its position as a major raw material provider for the electronics market. Evonik has developed its own HCDS production process and applied it in its first plant in Rheinfelden. The larger facility has a production capacity of several tens of thousands of kilograms.
The semiconductor industry is continuously working with 25 nm structures to manufacture flash memory chips. But, new products with even finer structures are now in the phase of application by major memory chip manufacturers. Such finer structures can be produced via chemical vapor deposition of HCDS material. The benefits of Siridion HCDS are it can be used in the production of memory chips at very low temperatures and it produces extremely homogenous, functional films. It also considerably minimizes the deposition of dangerous metal trace-elements in the products.