Increased fabs capacities for Hynix Semiconductor

Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has announced it is extending its Chinese and South Korean fabs’ capacities in order to meet booming demand and has extended an agreement with Air Liquide for gas supply.

In China, Air Liquide is expanding its long term carrier gas agreement with the Hynix-Numonyx B.V. joint-venture at its giant wafer fab in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, around 100km from Shanghai.

Hynix-Numonyx will require a number of gases for its 300mm wafer fabs dedicated to NAND flash memories, with Air Liquide China to expand the oxygen, argon, hydrogen, helium and compressed dry air supply. In order to fulfil the rapidly increasing demand in ultra pure nitrogen, the company will invest in two Ultra High Purity Nitrogen (HPN) generators and a total investment of around €35m.

In South Korea, Hynix has also choosen Air Liquide as its partner for the equipment and installation of bulk electronics specialty gas dispensing systems for its new 300 mm fab located in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, around 130km south-east of Seoul.

M.C. Kim, Vice-President and Chief Procurement Officer of Hynix Semiconductor said, “These increases in capacity are in line with our strategy to expand our 300mm output and to maximise our production efficiency.” 

“Air Liquide is a long time partner which has already supported our projects throughout the world. Its reliability and efficiency have stood the test of time and we are delighted to collaborate with them again on this project.” 

Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (Hynix) of Icheon, South Korea, is one of the world’s top tier memory semiconductor suppliers offering Dynamic Random Access Memory chips (DRAM’s) and Flash memory chips to a wide range of established international customers.