Harry Thewissen | Senior Principal Chemist, NXP Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Harry Thewissen, Senior Principal Chemist at NXP Nijmegen, is looking to the future. As we continue to grow, and produce more devices of increasing complexity, forecasts show that our emissions of Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs) could go up by as much. as 200 to 400% from 1995 to 2010.
“To address this,” says Harry, “our team of manufacturing process engineers has developed effective techniques that help all our fabs reduce their emissions.”
The reductions come from process improvements, investigation into less-harmful, alternative chemicals, and improved disposal techniques. According to Harry, “Our developments have already substantially reduced the relative PFC use per production unit and have reduced absolute emissions in nearly every NXP site. . Next year, all NXP sites will show a decreasing trend in absolute PFC emissions.”
Since reducing harmful emissions is in everyone‘s best interest, we‘re being proactive and sharing our most interesting developments with others in the semiconductor industry. “It‘s part of our responsibility,” says Harry, “and, although we still have substantial progress to make, I‘m proud to say that the work we‘re doing to reduce emissions is really being made a priority here at NXP.”