• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.57-64
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• 2008

The Semiconductor industry in Korea has achieved a great contribution to the growth of its economy for the last 20 years with its product export ranked to #1 nowadays. However, the working environment in semiconductor industry is always exposed to a potential risk of critical safety issue for workers with many kinds of utilities used such as toxic chemicals, gases, high vacuum and high voltages of electricity. This study is focused on empirical research to find out the factors on safety climate and to examine the relationships of safety climate and safe work behaviour in the work site of Korea semiconductor industry. As a result of simulation, a strong positive relationships and safe work behaviour have been identified in this study. Its result and implications has been discussed and suggested further studies on its limitation from this study.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2012

Objectives: The aim of this study is to review occupational hygiene activities, including work environment measurement as required by the industrial safety and health laws of Korea, and suggest improvements required to establish an effective exposure surveillance system. Methods: The controversial limitations of exposure surveillance examining the work-association of several types of cancers in semiconductor workers were reviewed. Results: The bulk of the exposure surveillance system was found to focus purely on work environment measurements without providing other important exposure surrogates, such as job title, operation, exposure duration, etc. The current work environment measurement system is limited in terms of the efficient assessment of the exposure status of workers due to a lack of exposure information. Conclusion: The introduction of a national standard classification of occupations and job titles into the exposure and health effect surveillance system should be discussed in order to retrospectively assess exposure characteristics.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.272-280
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• 2014

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the characteristics of worker exposure to hazardous chemical substances and propose the direction of work environment management for protecting worker's health in the semiconductor assembly process. Methods: Four assembly lines at two semiconductor manufacturing companies were selected for this study. We investigated the types of chemicals that were used and generated during the assembly process, and evaluated the workers' exposure levels to hazardous chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde and the current work environment management in the semiconductor assembly process. Results: Most of the chemicals used at the assembly process are complex mixtures with high molecular weight such as adhesives and epoxy molding compounds(EMCs). These complex mixtures are stable when they are used at room temperature. However workers can be exposed to volatile organic compounds(VOCs) such as benzene and formaldehyde when they are used at high temperature over $100^{\circ}C$. The concentration levels of benzene and formaldehyde in chip molding process were higher than other processes. The reason was that by-products were generated during the mold process due to thermal decomposition of EMC and machine cleaner at the process temperature($180^{\circ}C$). Conclusions: Most of the employees working at semiconductor assembly process are exposed directly or indirectly to various chemicals. Although the concentration levels are very lower than occupational exposure limits, workers can be exposed to carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde. Therefore, workers employed in the semiconductor assembly process should be informed of these exposure characteristics.

• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.303-316
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• 2008

For the past 25 years, Korean semiconductor has experienced enormous growth to be the highest production country in the world. Semiconductor industry is very time sensitive and driven by technology and process, and requires 24-hour full operation. The environment includes many different types of equipment, utilities, different gases and toxic chemicals as well as high voltage electricity. We have performed a survey with 3-shift engineers and workers in one line. The content of the questionnaire was about the correlation between fatigue and performance shaping factor (work type and work ability), and as a result we were able to deduce the correlation, p-value and the pattern of scatter plot. The shape of the model was made of 4 blocks for fatigue, 5 blocks for work type and 5 blocks for work ability, i. e. 14 blocks in total. As a conclusion to this findings, there was a correlation between fatigue and work type and work ability specifically in semiconductor industry, and we need some effort to reduce this.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.221-228
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• 2005

In this work, our goal is to develop a fast and accurate power model of the ARM926EJ-S processor in the industrial design environment. Compared with existing work on processor power modeling which focuses on the power states of processor core, our model mostly focuses on the cache power model. It gives more than 93% accuracy and 1600 times speedup compared with post-layout gate-level power estimation. We also address two practical issues in applying the processor power model to the real design environment. One is to incorporate the power model into an existing commercial instruction set simulator. The other is the re-characterization of power model parameters to cope with different gate-level netlists of the processor obtained from different design teams and different fabrication technology.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.36-44
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• 2015

Objectives: This study aimed to elucidate the physicochemical properties of silica powder and airborne particles as by-products generated from fabrication processes to reduce unknown risk factors in the semiconductor manufacturing work environment. Materials and Methods: Sampling was conducted at 200 mm and 300 mm semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. Thirty-two powder and airborne by-product samples, diffusion(10), chemical vapor deposition(10), chemical mechanical polishing(5), clean(5), etch process(2), were collected from inner chamber parts from process and 1st scrubber equipment during maintenance and process operation. The chemical composition, size, shape, and crystal structure of silica by-product particles were determined by using scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy techniques equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy, and x-ray diffractometry. Results: All powder and airborne particle samples were composed of oxygen(O) and silicon(Si), which means silica particle. The by-product particles were nearly spherical $SiO_2$ and the particle size ranged 25 nm to $50{\mu}m$, and most of the particles were usually agglomerated within a particle size range from approximately 25 nm to 500 nm. In addition, the crystal structure of the silica powder particles was found to be an amorphous silica. Conclusions: The silica by-product particles generated from the semiconductor manufacturing processes are amorphous $SiO_2$, which is considered a less toxic form. These results should provide useful information for alternative strategies to improve the work environment and workers' health.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.202-210
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• 2015

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine clean room(C/R) structure, air conditioning and contamination control systems and to provide basic information for identifying a correlation between the semiconductor work environment and workers' disease. Methods: This study was conducted at 200 mm and 300 mm semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities. The C/R structure and air conditioning method were investigated using basic engineering data from documentation for C/R construction. Furthermore, contamination parameters such as airborne particles, temperature, humidity, acids, ammonia, organic compounds, and vibration in the C/R were based on the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors(ITRS). The properties of contamination control systems and the current status of monitoring of various contaminants in the C/R were investigated. Results: 200 mm and 300 mm wafer fabrication facilities were divided into fab(C/R) and sub fab(Plenum), and fab, clean sub fab and facility sub fab, respectively. Fresh air(FA) is supplied in the plenum or clean sub fab by the outdoor air handling unit system which purifies outdoor air. FA supply or contaminated indoor air ventilation rates in the 200 mm and 300 mm wafer fabrication facilities are approximately 10-25%. Furthermore, semiconductor clean rooms strictly controlled airborne particles(${\leq}1,000{\sharp}/ft^3$), temperature($23{\pm}0.5^{\circ}C$), humidity($45{\pm}5%$), air velocity(0.4 m/s), air change(60-80 cycles/hr), vibration(${\leq}1cm/s^2$), and differential pressure(atmospheric pressure$+1.0-2.5mmH_2O$) through air handling and contamination control systems. In addition, acids, alkali and ozone are managed at less than internal criteria by chemical filters. Conclusions: Semiconductor clean rooms can be a pleasant environment for workers as well as semiconductor devices. However, based on the precautionary principle, it may be necessary to continuously improve semiconductor processes and the work environment.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.39-51
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• 2011

Objectives: This study was designed to evaluate exposure levels of various chemicals used in wafer fabrication product lines in the semiconductor industry where work-related leukemia has occurred. Methods: The research focused on 9 representative wafer fabrication bays among a total of 25 bays in a semiconductor product line. We monitored the chemical substances categorized as human carcinogens with respect to leukemia as well as harmful chemicals used in the bays and substances with hematologic and reproductive toxicities to evaluate the overall health effect for semiconductor industry workers. With respect to monitoring, active and passive sampling techniques were introduced. Eight-hour long-term and 15-minute short-term sampling was conducted for the area as well as on personal samples. Results: The results of the measurements for each substance showed that benzene, toluene, xylene, n-butyl acetate, 2-methoxy-ethanol, 2-heptanone, ethylene glycol, sulfuric acid, and phosphoric acid were non-detectable (ND) in all samples. Arsine was either "ND" or it existed only in trace form in the bay air. The maximum exposure concentration of fluorides was approximately 0.17% of the Korea occupational exposure limits, with hydrofluoric acid at about 0.2%, hydrochloric acid 0.06%, nitric acid 0.05%, isopropyl alcohol 0.4%, and phosphine at about 2%. The maximum exposure concentration of propylene glycol monomethyl ether acetate (PGMEA) was 0.0870 ppm, representing only 0.1% or less than the American Industrial Hygiene Association recommended standard (100 ppm). Conclusion: Benzene, a known human carcinogen for leukemia, and arsine, a hematologic toxin, were not detected in wafer fabrication sites in this study. Among reproductive toxic substances, n-butyl acetate was not detected, but fluorides and PGMEA existed in small amounts in the air. This investigation was focused on the air-borne chemical concentrations only in regular working conditions. Unconditional exposures during spills and/or maintenance tasks and by-product chemicals were not included. Supplementary studies might be required.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.32-41
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• 2012

Objectives: Information of chemical in electronics industry has not been known enough, although workers' health hazards by chemicals in this industry have been regarded serious. The who always contribute to reveal and control the health hazards and risks in electronics industry have not been the industry but the occupational or environmental victims and grassroot organizations. The similar phenomena can be observed in Korea. Methods: The experiences of individual workers on the occuapational safety and health in semiconductor factory were heard separately and integrated with related literatures. Results:: The first part of this article is largely based on the memories and experiences of individual workers of semiconductor factories, mainly from S semiconductor. Common features of those experiences can be a good resource for detail understanding of the workplace, especially under the situation without any transparent disclosure of information by the governments or the companies. The second part of this article deals with several factors to be considered for control of exposure in workplace; characteristics of workplace and workforce, types of chemicals used, and the way of using the chemicals. Then the current social issues on work-relatedness of cancers of S semiconductor workers are presented briefly. Conclusions: As a conclusion, current OSH situations and issues in Korean electronics industry raise the need of changes in OSH culture. General adaptation of precautionary principle, internalization of costs, and extended responsibility of producers are needed urgently. The OSH professionals both in public and private sectors should support these agendas under their social obligation to protect workers' health.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2022.05a
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• pp.161-164
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• 2022

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) schemes have been recently growing as a reliable solution to preserve users' information owe to maintaining and operating the user data in the encrypted state. In addition to that, several Neural Networks models merged with HE schemes have been developed as a prospective tool for privacy-preserving machine learning. Those mentioned works demonstrated that it is possible to match the accuracy of non-encrypted models but there is always a trade-off in the computation time. In this work, we evaluate the implementation of CKKS HE scheme operations over the layers of a LeNet5 convolutional inference model, however, owing to the limitations of the evaluation environment, the scope of this work is not to develop a complete LeNet5 encrypted model. The evaluation was performed using the MNIST dataset with Microsoft SEAL (MSEAL) open-source homomorphic encryption library ported version on Python (PyFhel). The behavior of the encrypted model, the limitations faced and a small description of related and future work is also provided.