Plating anode

Conflict mineral free anodes to ensure safety • We have eliminated the conflict minerals from our products. Our products use lead in extremely low amounts, allowing us to comply with the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive. • Our anodes are made of minute crystal particles of uniform diameter to allow electroplating at low voltages, thus contributing to energy saving • We use special manufacturing methods to keep the oxide content in our anodes low in order to suppress the contamination of plating liquid and reduce the electroplating cost. Audits verify that SMIC anodes do not contain "conflict minerals". In addition to complying with Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act for the conflict mineral-free cause, our products contain extremely small amount of lead. We ensure this by performing lot management. The deposit formed by the plating process contains extremely small amount of lead (1,000 ppm) as stipulated by the EU RoHS Directive. This eliminates the need of a separate process to check the lead content. Fewer oxides on the grain boundaries make cost reductions possible. The minute crystal structure also prevents too many oxides from getting formed between the grain boundaries. When the tin content of the anode is ionized to melt into the plating liquid, the oxides that are not desirable to the plating film deposit are released into the plating liquid. SMIC's low-oxide anodes release an extremely small amount of oxides to prevent contamination of the plating fluid, thus lowering the frequency of replacing the plating fluid, and eliminating the need of a separate cleaning process. This allows cost reduction.