Chemicals

Our manufacturing processes require significant amounts of chemicals especially in front-end processes. Since some chemicals have a potential impact on the environment and also carry health and safety risks, we work hard to keep their use to a minimum. The chemicals we target are photoresists, developers, sulfuric acid, hydrogen peroxide, hydrofluoric acid, and a selection of solvent compounds.

STEV64; §2.3 Decalogue

We have exceeded our target of reducing by 5% a year the consumption of chemicals per unit of production. In 2005, our front-end sites reduced the consumption of chemicals per production unit by 0.3% versus 2004, while back-end sites reduced by 22% over the same period.

As in the case of water consumption, the increase in absolute values (+10% from 2000 to 2005) is due to the significant increase in production (+83% over the same period).

Consumption of chemicals: absolute values
Net consumption	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Tons of chemicals	16,947	13,053	14,188	15,345	16,938	18,669

These net values would have been much higher without the actions we have taken.

The chart below shows our performance against our Decalogue target (reduction by 5% per year) since 2000 (our reporting system for chemicals was not reliable enough to publish before that date).

Consumption of chemicals: normalized values

	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
kg/production unit	100	79.1	71.1	65.5	61.1	60.2
Target	100	95.0	90.3	85.7	81.5	77.4

See the Environmental costs versus savings table for details of the cost savings resulting from reduction of consumption of chemicals.