Sustainable Product Innovation

We approach product sustainability with six focuses:

• Improving wafer output

  We are increasing our tools’ output relative to the amount of energy they require, using advanced techniques like cryogenic etch and dry resist processes.

• Increasing energy efficiency

  Lam is addressing many of the factors that affect our tools’ energy efficiency, from how they manage operational temperature and create plasma to the performance of peripheral equipment like pumps and chillers.

• Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

  We’re identifying and capitalizing on opportunities to shift away from high global warming potential chemistries to reduce emissions and the carbon footprint of our tools.

• Extending product lifespans

  We support product circularity through upgrades, spare parts, refurbishments, and recleaning services. In addition, our Customer Support Business Group offers resources to maximize the usable life of tools and components.

• Surfacing insights through virtualization

  By simulating physical processes like hardware prototyping, process optimization, and device characterization, we can gain useful insights while reducing costs, emissions, and material use.

• Regulatory readiness

  We are working to identify where per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are present in our direct design choices and order-to-shelf supply chain and the practicable substitutes for replacement.

Product efficiency and sustainability go hand in hand

At Lam, we seek to prove that it’s possible to maximize productivity while minimizing the use of raw materials, energy, and space. We’re working to optimize our products and processes to be smarter and more efficient, in line with our company’s and customers’ business and sustainability goals.

These initiatives are critical to our net zero journey, as the largest portion of Lam’s emissions are generated through product use. Our approach includes:

Creating products that go further

Lam provides high-quality, low-defect consumable and non-consumable spare parts designed to increase circularity while balancing performance, availability, and cost. Our spare parts offerings leverage services including re-cleaning, repair, refurbishment, and re-coating. This enables the reuse of electrostatic chucks, radio frequency hardware, showerheads, and other high-value spare parts. By reusing these parts, we aim to build added value into our products and reduce the environmental impacts of manufacturing new tools.

Progressing with purpose throughout the product lifecycle

The semiconductor industry has long depended on physical experimentation to achieve the precision needed for advanced chip manufacturing. However, this traditional method comes with environmental impacts—high energy consumption, material waste, and GHG emissions. Lam uses virtual technologies—such as augmented, virtual, and extended reality, supplemented with AI and machine learning—to reduce these impacts while delivering groundbreaking innovation.

Lam is exploring virtualization through Semiverse® Solutions, our portfolio of advanced software platforms to solve process modeling, design automation, and integration challenges. The business is showcasing the beginning of what could be a massive industry transformation toward R&D through virtual twins—a virtual representation of a process or physical asset. Virtual twins allow designers and maintenance professionals to understand and predict how the process or asset behaves without requiring extensive physical prototypes or experiments. Everything from plasma dynamics to deposition and etch processes can be simulated.

This capability has the potential to help our customers meet some of their sustainability challenges by dramatically reducing the consumption of physical resources like silicon wafers, chemicals, and gases.

Our focus on product quality and safety is fundamental to everything we do. With oversight from our cross-functional Quality Leadership team, Lam’s product design teams seek to ensure the products and services we provide are safe for their intended use and in compliance with market regulations and standards. We strive to take a systematic approach to continuously improve our products and quickly address adjustments that need to be made. Lam is also certified under ISO 9001:2015,¹ an international standard that provides a framework for an effective quality management system.

Preventing, reporting, and addressing product safety concerns
As part of our product release process, new products undergo safety certification testing. We document the results in a product safety report, commonly known as a SEMI S2. Our Logistics team provides safety data sheets for materials such as cleaning fluids and lubricants. Customers can enter into service agreements with Lam to ensure proper product maintenance, and we provide customer training on the safe use of our products, typically over the span of a week-long course.

When issues related to product safety or performance arise, we notify our customer base. We also have systems in place that allow our field-service personnel and customers to report safety issues to Lam. Our Product Safety team assesses these issues to verify the safety concern. If the issue is product-related, the Product Safety team will typically generate a safety problem report to address it. If the issue is behavioral, the Product Safety team will address the matter at the local level.

Promoting safety best practices on a larger scale
We further advance product safety best practices in our industry through collaboration with customers and industry peers. For instance, Lam helps lead the SEMI Equipment Suppliers group to address new product regulations impacting the industry. For more than two decades, Lam has worked with stakeholders to develop, implement, and continually improve the SEMI Environmental Health and Safety Guidelines for Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment. These standards are broadly used across the semiconductor industry and other industries to minimize hazards related to equipment, facilities, and work environments.

Lam is in the business of advancing technology. Sharing our expertise and being receptive to new perspectives and ideas sparks innovation and drives progress. Through our office of the chief technology and sustainability officer, we engage leading universities, researchers, and Lam’s global engineering community to collaborate on innovative solutions for the industry’s biggest challenges. Lam’s university collaborations fulfill two goals: The research fuels Lam’s technology pipeline, while the participating students fuel Lam’s talent pipeline and spark creative approaches to industry challenges.

1. Lam holds ISO 9001 certification for our Fremont and Livermore, California; Tualatin, Oregon; Osan, Korea; Taoyuan City, Taiwan; Villach, Austria; and Penang, Malaysia sites.