ALLENTOWN, Pa. (March 1, 2002) — Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.'s (NYSE:APD) Singapore subsidiary, Air Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., has secured a MEGASYS® Total Gas Management contract with DenseLight Semiconductors Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-based manufacturer of Indium Phosphide (InP) chips for next generation high-speed optical networks.
The MEGASYS contract—which involves having Air Products technicians on-site to manage gas inventory and ensure an uninterrupted supply of ultra-pure gases at the point of use—follows the successful completion of a turnkey project in late 2001 at DenseLight's 50,000-square foot facility. As part of the turnkey project, Air Products supplied all of the fab's gas cabinets, valve manifold boxes and racks, while Kinetic Systems, Inc.—Air Products' partner via its TRiMEGA Electronics, L.L.C. joint venture*—provided complete installation, hook-up and commissioning of the facility's high purity gas piping and abatement systems.
Air Products also is supplying DenseLight's electronic specialty gas needs, including arsine, phosphine, ammonia, boron trichloride, hydrogen chloride and others. DenseLight's products are part of the growing compound semiconductor market, a sector that is expected to exceed $30 billion dollars within the next five years. A compound semiconductor is a material containing two or more chemically bound elements that exhibit semiconductor properties and which are found in columns III-V or II-VI in the Periodic Table of Elements.
Commenting on the turnkey project work at DenseLight, Robert Pragada, vice president of Kinetic Systems, said, "The total system solution provided to DenseLight by the Air Products and Kinetics team further validates the cost of ownership and speed-to-market benefits our companies provide to the global electronics market."
"DenseLight is a total photonics solution provider with a range of products set to transform the global optical networking industry," added Gerald G. Ermentrout, vice president and general manager of Air Products' global Electronics Division. "Through our turnkey project work with Kinetics, we are proud to have provided the complete scope of products and services that helped bring DenseLight into commercial production. Going forward, our gas products will be vital to the manufacture of their advanced component solutions, and our MEGASYS on-site management personnel will provide reliable delivery of on-spec gases to their process tools, worry-free."
The MEGASYS contract with DenseLight is the second on-site management arrangement secured by Air Products in Singapore (Air Products has been supplying industrial and specialty gases and MEGASYS services to Wacker Siltronics Singapore since 1999). The company now has nearly 90 MEGASYS gas and chemical management contracts with electronics facilities worldwide.
"Technical support demonstrated by Air Products personnel has led to a safe and on time start-up of gas delivery systems at DenseLight," said Geok-Ing Ng, DenseLight's Chief Operating Officer. "The local MEGASYS team has put work instructions and documents in place in a reasonably short time, and personnel are backed up by Air Products' Technical Center that handles warehousing and inventory management of gases. This well-rounded approach provides a greater confidence level for just-in-time delivery of products, thus eliminating the need for on-site storage. Also, Emergency Response training provided by Air Products' specialists has helped DenseLight's Emergency Response Team understand and appreciate properties of different gases used at our site," he said.
About DenseLight
Headquartered in Singapore, DenseLight Semiconductors (www.denselight.com) provides value-added component solutions for next-generation optical networks. DenseLight's mission is to deliver integrated optical subsystems on a single chip, thereby empowering customers with competitive advantages in performance, power consumption, footprint, and total cost of ownership. DenseLight is ready to begin commercial production, with a 50,000-sq. ft. purpose-built facility housing its headquarters, R&D and manufacturing operations under one roof. Its 15,000-sq. ft. submicron-class cleanroom is fully equipped for cutting-edge InP wafer fabrication, enabling vertical integration from product design to epitaxial growth, wafer processing, backend processing, packaging, and functional and reliability testing. The company has launched a number of new products, including direct-modulated DFB lasers, high-performance gain chips and superluminescent diodes with soon-to-be-released products including tunable lasers, Raman pump lasers and embedded optical channel monitors.
About Air Products
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (www.airproducts.com) is the world's only combined gases and chemicals company. Founded more than 60 years ago, the business has annual revenues of $5.7 billion and operations in 30 countries. Air Products is a market leader in the global electronics and chemical processing industries, and a longstanding innovator in many industrial markets, including coatings, adhesives and polyurethanes. The company distinguishes itself through its 18,000 employees around the world, who build lasting relationships with their customers and communities based on understanding, integrity and passion. |
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