Korea Business News Agency - NSP NEWS AGENCY.

(Seoul=NSP NEWS AGENCY) = SK Hynix announced that it has developed neon(Ne) gas recycling technology for the first time in the semiconductor industry in collaboration with TEMC, a domestic special gas company for semiconductors.

When the recent international political unrest led to uncertainty over the supply of neon, which has been imported, the company started developing recycling technology with local small and medium-sized enterprises, and within a year, the results were achieved.

SK Hynix and TEMC captured the neon gas that was discharged into the air through a scrubber after the lithography process in a collection tank, and selectively separated and purified only neon through TEMC's gas treatment process.

Neon purified in this way is supplied back to SK Hynix and used in the semiconductor manufacturing process. The current neon recovery rate reaches 72.7%. SK Hynix plans to continuously improve the purification yield and increase the neon recovery rate to 77%.

The neon recycling technology is expected to reduce the cost of neon purchases by KRW 40 billion per year when applied to semiconductor fabs. The technology is also expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 3) from the neon production process by around 12,000 tCO2e/yr.

By Soon-ki Lee(s8789@nspna.com) and Bok-hyun Lee(bhlee2016@nspna.com)

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