25 per cent of silicon wafer production halted by Japanese earthquake

ONE QUARTER of global silicon wafer production has been halted due to the recent earthquake in Japan, which means a difficult time ahead for the memory sector, according to market research firm Isuppli.

Two major plants, Shin-Etsu Chemical's Shirakawa and MEMC Electronic Materials's Utsunomiya facilities, have stopped production of the vital silicon wafers. These plants accounted for 25 per cent of the global supply of silicon wafers required to make semiconductor chips.

The Shirakawa plant normally produces 300mm wafers, which are primarily used for memory such as flash and DRAM. With this plant alone accounting for 20 per cent of silicon wafer production, the memory sector will be particularly hard hit, resulting in lower global supply.

Shin-Etsu will attempt to offset the loss of its Shirakawa plant by increasing production at other facilities, but it is unsure how long it will take to get the damaged plant back into operation.

The Utsunomiya plant, which accounts for five per cent of wafer production, faces significant delays after the earthquake. MEMC said that the delay will be for the "near term", but did not specify exactly how long this might last.

Supplies of printed circuit boards, which are used in a wide variety of electronic products such as PCs and smartphones, will also see a substantial drop after Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Hitachi Kasei Polymer were forced to halt production. They account for 70 per cent of global supply of the copper-clad laminate material used in the circuit boards, but they hope to resume production in two weeks. µ