The panel will address the role played by industrial emissions of perfluorinated compounds in global warming
Edwards, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of integrated vacuum and abatement solutions, announced today that Environmental Solutions Business Development Manager, Mike Czerniak, nominated by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), has just been accepted as the ‘expert witness’ on CF4 for the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working party on emissions of this extremely long-lived gas (50,000 years).
The semiconductor industry’s achievement of the previous WSC 2010 target was accomplished by two key efforts. The first was the replacement of traditional CF4 and C2F6 chemical vapor deposition (CVD) cleaning gases with NF3, which readily dissociates in a plasma to provide fluorine, an effective cleaning gas. No carbon is released and fluorine, though toxic, is not a greenhouse gas. The second major effort was the widespread adoption of exhaust gas abatement solutions.
We have made great efforts, as an industry and a society, to reduce atmospheric contamination, and the first signs of recovery are now appearing in the hole in the UV-protective ozone layer over Antarctica. The hole was caused by increasing levels of chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFCs), which have been banned since the 1980s. It is gratifying and encouraging to see that efforts we take as a society can actually succeed in mitigating the environmental problems we cause. The current concern with perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), which strongly contribute to climate change and are used in semiconductor chip manufacturing, is more challenging due to their much longer atmospheric lifetimes.
Czerniak
I am very honoured that my nomination has been accepted, and grateful for the personal opportunity it presents. I look forward to getting involved in updating the PFC emission factors for the next revision of the IPCC Semiconductor Industry Guidelines in 2018. The semiconductor industry has set very aggressive reduction goals and has made some rather impressive achievements thus far. New targets have been set by the World Semiconductor Counsel for 2020.
Czerniak
Edwards exhaust gas management business has been dedicated to minimising the carbon footprint of electronics manufacture. Edwards helps customers in the semiconductor, flat panel display (FPD) and solar cell business reduce their emissions of harmful gases through the use of highly efficient exhaust gas abatement equipment. Edwards is proud to note that its own net carbon footprint, which combines the effects of its own operations and the use of its products, is negative – it removes more significantly more carbon from the environment than it adds.
For further information about Edwards’ products and services, please visit www.edwardsvacuum.com.