| Towards Environmentally Friendly packaging |
STMicroelectronics is fully committed to Environmental protection within its Sustainable Excellence program. It has been a pioneer in environmental protection since 1992 and kept such issues at the forefront of its management. ST has adopted the most stringent Environment, Health & Safety regulations worldwide and strictly applies these rules to all its sites / organizations. ST has also anticipated compliance with all the recently published laws and regulations regarding materials declaration and elimination of chemical and hazardous substances from its products and manufacturing processes. Changes that may derive from such evolution and that impact the products we market are communicated in a timely and transparent manner to our customers through means including Product/Process Change Notification (PCN), Production Information Letter (PIL), Application Note (AN).
Technical solutions for packaging are provided by ST R&D in a joint effort with customers and suppliers.
Today, our list of banned chemicals (including about 1,600 substances) meets the most stringent worldwide regulations and is in accord with our customers’ requirements.
We require compliance certificates from our suppliers who provide homogeneous materials which are used in packaging, such as molding compounds, glues, lead frames, substrates, etc. We also provide upon request compliance certificates to our customers.
 |
|
ECOPACK® is a voluntary and strategic program, launched in 2000, for removing polluting and hazardous substances from all our product lines. It is the cornerstone of our effort of being a leader in the change toward environmentally friendly packaging. In the context of this program, ST develops world class technical solutions designed to progressively remove heavy metals and halogens from manufacturing.
ST products are classified according to Ecopack grades:
- ECOPACK or ECOPACK1: Initial grade to identify European RoHS compliant products,
- ECOPACK2: New grade recently introduced to identify commonly called “Halogen-Free” products on the market.
Ecopack, Ecopack1, Ecopack2, …. are registered trademarks of STMicroelectronics. |
| RoHS = Restriction of
the use of certain Hazardous Substances |
The directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliament is applicable since July 1st, 2006. The aim of this directive is to ban heavy metals (Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Hexavalent Chromium, …) and two brominated compounds (PBB and PBDE)...
All ST ECOPACK grades are RoHS compliant.
ST is a member of international working groups, including the “E4 Group” with selected competitors (Infineon, Freescale, NXP, ST) to propose common technical solutions.
ST does not use the “Halogen-Free” terminology since, as per most of the market definitions, the relevant products might today contain some halogens such as fluoride in glue spacers.
To avoid confusion, and in line with its strategy to remove brominated, chlorinated and Antimony-oxide flame retardants, ST has introduced the ECOPACK2 grade which is defined as following:
- RoHS compliant even with use of RoHS exemptions (ECOPACK1)
- 500 ppm maximum of Antimony as oxide or organic compound in each organic assembly Materials (glue, substrate, mold compounds, housing). Antimony in ceramic parts or in solder alloy is not restricted.
- 900ppm maximum Bromide + Chloride in these values are referring to maximum total content, not to extractible ions content.
ST warrants that ECOPACK® devices are compliant with the European Directive 2002/95 on Restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances and have a Lead-free second level interconnect. Due to the large number of products and processes involved, ST cannot warrant that the technical solutions described for enabling such compliance are fully accurate, nor that customers’ own products, which incorporate such ST devices, will in turn comply with the European Directive 2002/95 on restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances.
In all events, the customer shall remain liable for:
- checking marking, date-code and inner box labeling of all ST products
- taking full responsibility for all stock management and product qualification in the application
- verifying the compatibility with its soldering process
- any changes made to ST products
- being compliant with local regulation requirements (e.g. RoHS China labeling rules)
