Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials (NYSE:ROH), a leader and innovator in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) technology for the global semiconductor industry, today announced that it has received a volume order for its IC 1000™ line of CMP pads from a leading memory manufacturer, that will be produced entirely at the Rohm and Haas CMP Technologies Asia Pacific Manufacturing and Technical Center (Hsinchu Site). The memory manufacturer will use the IC 1000 pads in its advanced process technologies at several Asian sites.

The order represents an important milestone for the Rohm and Haas facility in Hsinchu, which became fully certified and operational in its “front end” polymerization process in December 2008. Rohm and Haas’s IC1000 and IC1000 AT pads and VISIONPADS™ have been sampling from the Hsinchu facility since then, and are in the qualification stage with numerous manufacturers in the region.

The Hsinchu Site was completed in phases to meet increasing demand for 200 mm and 300 mm CMP pad requirements in Asia. The first phase consisted of pad finishing operations which became fully functional in March of 2007. The facility has received ISO 9001 and 14001 certification and is the only company within the semiconductor industry in Taiwan to earn the Green Building Award from the Taiwanese government, recognizing it for daily energy saving, CO2 emission and waste reduction, and water resource conservation. The Hsinchu facility has since been qualified by major logic and memory semiconductor customers in the region.

“This order highlights the value that Rohm and Haas’s new facility brings to its customers in the Asia Pacific region,” stated Sam Shoemaker, vice president and business unit director for Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials CMP Technologies. “We have always offered industry leading products and service, but our new regional ability to take customers through process development and enhancement, qualification and complete pad production from polymerization to finishing takes us to an entirely new level that is unmatched in the industry. We have significantly improved response and turnaround times for our Asian customers, and the Hsinchu facility has the capacity to supply all of Asia's pad demands.”

The pad finishing operations have been fully functional for two years and Rohm and Haas has multiple existing customers for this capability.