We here at High Tech Design Safety are kicking off the new year with a new multi-part video series on product safety. We will start it off with an in-depth training for Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment. And in today’s video specifically, Steve Barcik Amstel will give an introduction to SEMI S2 and an overview of what companies can expect on the path to get their equipment to market.
(Link to video also available here: https://youtu.be/u-SUpK8N9PI )
Steve is going to start with SEMI S2. It’s a global guideline of EHS requirements (environmental safety and health requirements) for manufacturing equipment for the semiconductor fab and for any of the support equipment as well. SEMI is a global organization made up of engineers and other team members from semiconductor manufacturing companies, semiconductor equipment manufacturing companies, local jurisdictional authorities, insurance companies and many other concerned people including third parties consultants, engineering firms and others who all come together to write these standards. That’s typically how standards are written and in this case SEMI S2 is the overarching standard for semiconductor capital equipment. It has 28 sections and about as many related appendices and related informational articles at the end.
Now the scope of SEMI S2 applies to equipment used to manufacture, measure, assemble and test semiconductor products. That is pretty broad, right? So that would include everything from things in your gas room, gas cabinet, it’s liquid delivery systems, everything in that fab that comes together for that specific purpose of manufacturing semiconductors. This is an overarching standard so it includes everything that deals with the product safety of this equipment.
It goes from the informational documentation that you’ll need to read, provide, generate as manuals and documents to support the equipment onto electrical design. Additionally you’ll have another document from outside for the electrical design of your equipment. Likely if you’re in the USA, it’ll be NFPA 79 or it might be one of the global harmonized standards which would be UL IEC ANSI, using some acronyms up front that I can explain later. It will be Standard 60204 in some cases. For actual industrial equipment, it might be the UL Standard 61010, which deals with test and measurement equipment or metrology equipment. Whether it’s metrology of the wafer, the air, the gases or the liquids going to the wafer or it may be one other standard. Maybe it might be a 60950 Standard, which deals with information technology equipment, and how that enters into the process. Those would be your attendant electrical standard and then SEMI S2 continues to go on through section-by-section allowing you to verify the equipment and it’s design.
Now notice how Steve said verify. Our goal is to help you and your team design your equipment to the standard at the beginning. Here is an analogy Steve uses a lot. It would be like let’s say we made cookies but we didn’t know what kind we were supposed to make or we didn’t have a recipe so we might make a lovely sugar cookie but the goal was to end up with a chocolate chip cookie. You see how you would miss the mark if you’d made sugar cookies instead of chocolate chip cookies and we know that’s kind of simplistic however in the case of a standard like this with 28 sections, building semiconductor equipment to the standard ensures that in the end your product will be conforming and come to market easily.
In additional upcoming video segments like this, we’ll talk more about each of the sections of SEMI S2 and then we’ll expand to talk about the related standards…For example SEMI S1 which deals with labeling, labeling formats and how to put labels on your equipment such that they communicate the hazards or like SEMI S8 which is an ergonomic standard about how an operator, maintenance or service person will have to interact with your equipment. If you enjoy these videos please like and subscribe to our YouTube Chanel and give us feedback. Let us know how you enjoy these segments and what you’d like to see more of. https://youtu.be/u-SUpK8N9PI
And if you are looking for more support getting your product to market, please give us a ring so that we can create a practical solution.
