Micro-Electronics - Intel
Intel has built many semi-conductor fabrication facilities around the world and Stonhard Inc. has been heavily involved in manufacturing and installing huge areas of Chemically Resistant Coatings (CRCs) for these facilities.
The main areas where CRCs are used are:
- Lining external and internal chemical bunds.
- Central Utilities Building - floors and bunds.
- Cleanrooms and cleanroom support areas - floors under computer flooring.
- Acid waste neutralizer pit - floors and walls.
- Cooling towers - floors and walls.
- Tanker offloading bunds and loading docks - trafficked areas.
- Fan decks - corridor floors.
- Lining scrubber bunds.
- Sub-Fab – high build coatings to dust seal - floors and walls.
- Ultra pure water bunds - floors and walls.
- Lining tunnels, trenches and manholes.
- Tool movement corridors.
- Wafer storage and despatch floors.
- Solvent storage - antistatic linings.
What Did Intel Want to Achieve?
- A safe working environment with full containment of a wide range of potentially aggressive chemicals to support Intel’s Environmental Management System.
- Very high performing, very low outgassing coatings for cleanrooms.
- Low maintenance, high performance protection throughout the FABs.
- High aesthetics where possible.
Stonhard Single Source Solution
Choice of CRC
Based on extremely detailed requirements from Intel, each area of the facility has a customized and cost optimized CRC. The CRC systems are generally chosen on a combination of one or more of the following criteria:
- Chemical resistance - documented testing required.
- Crack bridging - fibreglass reinforced systems necessary.
- Anti-static or conductive - carbon based systems in solvent areas.
- Degree of slip resistance necessary.
- Type of traffic expected - foot traffic to tankers.
- Temperature of exposure - internal or external.
- Ease of maintenance and life expectancy.
- Aesthetics
Scale and Management of Projects
Over the last twelve years, Stonhard (UK) Ltd has installed very large areas of CRCs in five Intel FABs, four in Leixlip, Ireland, and, more recently, one in Israel. Twenty seven different combinations of epoxies, Novalac epoxies, polyurethanes, vinyl esters, polyesters and polyureas have been installed with a total area of about 163,000m2. On each multi-million pound project Stonhard (UK) Ltd has had a full time Contracts Manager, a Safety Manager and had a strictly enforced Quality Control Programme.
