July 6, 2006 — /Air Liquide/ — The electronic chip, omnipresent in our everyday lives in computers, mobile phones and MP3 players, must live up to leading-edge performance and exceptional properties: ever-increasing capacity in memory, speed and power. Moore’s Law, proposed by Gordon E. Moore in 1965, foresaw that processor performance would double every 18 months. This principle continues to be confirmed: in 1980, the memory capacity of chips was 64 Kbits; today it is 2 Gigabits, or 30,000 times greater!

In order to manufacture smaller and smaller chips, with reinforced functions, the semi-conductor industry has to constantly develop more advanced chip materials. The materials of tomorrow* require the use of new molecules. In this constant race towards miniaturization and improved performance, Air Liquide Electronics has developed a range of these new molecules, custom-designed for the new processes of its customers manufacturing semi-conductors. These molecules, and associated equipment, make up the ALOHA offering. Launched in 2005, it has seen growth greater than 30 percent per year.

In order to accompany this growth in the market, Air Liquide is strengthening its production facilities, in France at the Air Liquide Electronics site in Chalon-sur-Sa