Toshiba starts construction of fab

Toshiba has started construction of its recently announced 300mm wafer fab at Yokkaichi in Japan The site is Toshiba's key production base for semiconductor memories. Once the high-productivity facility is complete, its output will be channelled to NAND Flash memory. Total investment in the new facility in the period through to the end of the 2006 financial year is expected to approach $2.5bn. Toshiba will fund construction of the building. FlashVision Japan, the joint venture between Toshiba and its NAND Flash strategic partner SanDisk, will fund its advanced manufacturing equipment, with each partner providing an equal share of the funds. The structure will be a five-storey building with a total floor area of 113,000m2 on a 24,300m2 site. The total cleanroom area will account for 34,500m2. The projected completion of the building is put at December 2004. The 300mm facility is expected to come on line and move to mass production in the second half of the 2005 financial year, with an initial capacity of 10,000 wafers a month. At planned full capacity this will climb to 37,500 wafers a month. Output during each phase of expansion will be equally shared between Toshiba and SanDisk, a provision that will form part of the definitive agreement on the facility (Fab 3) that the companies expect to sign in June 2004. The fab still has space to expand capacity, and further investment could take output to as high as 62,500 wafers a month. Toshiba will reduce emissions of perfluorocarbons and carbon dioxide from the new cleanroom and reduce energy consumed in wafer processing by 30% compared with its 200mm cleanrooms.

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