Air Products Plans To Double Its NF3 Capacity Next Spring

29 May 2000 00:00  [Source: ICB Americas]

By Ivan Lerner

Citing the spectacular growth of the semiconductor industry, Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (APC) will launch another nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) expansion at its specialty gases plant in Hometown, Pa.

Projected to be completed by next spring, the company's latest expansion of its NF3 business will more than double the plant's available capacity to 1.75 million pounds per year. Air Product's decision comes on the heels of the completion of an 800,000-pound-per-year NF3 expansion at the site last December.

NF3 is used for cleaning in the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process used to make semiconductors. Originally developed in the mid-1990s to replace gases linked to global warming, the new gas not only reduced effluent emissions by 90 percent, it was "an ideal molecule for this process," according to Joe Stockunas, APC's worldwide marketing manager for its electronics division. He notes that NF3 provides faster chamber cleaning, which has improved productivity by 30 percent.

APC has seen 50 percent annual growth for NF3 over the last five years. "You could have called it a boutique product for us until 1997. Since then, it has grown in earnest," Mr. Stockunas says. At the end of 1997, APC produced 275,000 pound of NF3.

"This year, with [the upswing in the semiconductor] industry, we are seeing 100 percent growth in NF3 sales and expect the same next year," says Mr. Stockunas.

In 1999, APC had revenues of more than $5 billion. Its electronics division brought in roughly 12 percent of that, with sales of specialty gases, the company's fastest growing segment, accounting for $250 million. The company does not release sales figures for individual products.

Further capacity increases and expansions are planned, an APC spokesman says.

Most analysts project that the semiconductor market will grow at a 15 percent annual rate, but recently Salomon Smith Barney calculated that global semiconductor sales increased by 33 percent from the first quarter of 1999 to $44 billion in the first quarter of 2000.

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