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TSMC's Fab 14B Photoresist Material Incident: $550 Million in Lost Revenue
TSMC[*] on Friday revealed more details regarding an incident with a photoresist material at its Fab 14B earlier this year. The contaminated chemical damaged wafers on TSMC's 12 nm and 16 nm lines, and the company now expects the full impact of the event to reduce their revenue by a whopping $550 million in the first quarter.
TSMC said that a batch of photoresist it used included a specific element which was abnormally treated, creating a foreign polymer in the photoresist. The problem was detected late when the wafer yeilds were lower than expected. As it turns out, consequences of the photoresist incident at Fab 14B were more serious than initially calculated by TSMC. There are media reports claiming that between 10,000 and 30,000 wafers were affected and had to be scrapped, but TSMC has never confirmed either of the numbers.
According to media reports, the affected companies include HiSilicon/Huawei, NVIDIA, and MediaTek, but TSMC has not disclosed names of its customers that suffered from the incident. The only thing that TSMC does confirm is that it has already negotiated new delivery scheduled with its customers.
[*] TSMC: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Previously: TSMC Fab 14 B hit by Massive Wafer Defection due to Chemical Contamination, 16/12nm Production Line
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday February 22 2019, @02:42AM (1 child)
So, they either trusted the supplier, who is now fucked, or they didn't do any sort of quality control on incoming chemicals.
I recently read a Max Gergel book. He was a chemist from WW2 to the 70s. Seems purity controls weren't a thing until 1960 or so, and that made him and his company tighten up their processes.
Fun Fact: Max's company used to just take chemical byproducts out to the back yard and dump them. Now his old company site is an EPA supersite.
It's late and I'm lazy, you can find the Gergel book here: http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/ [sciencemadness.org] Have fun, that is a hell of an info dump.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @03:46PM
As long as Max Gergel gets rich and doesn't land in jail, then that's great for Max Gergel.