33) "Wanpaku-san (Naughty Boy)", Founder of Silicon Industry
Kazuhiro Maeda of Shin Nippon Chisso Hiryo (later, Chisso Electro-Chemical)
It is recognized by all that Japanese semiconductor silicon
wafer industry is still positioned in the forefront in the world market, both
in quality and in quantity. In the pioneer days of this industry, the greatest
contributor was Kazuhiro Maeda of Nippon Chisso Hiryo (Japan Nitrogen Fertilizer)
Co. Ltd., who played the pioneer role of industrialization. By his appearance
you see in the photo and by his dynamic actions, he was called "Wanpaku-san",
which means "Naughty Boy" in Japanese, instead of his real name
"Kazuhiro", and he was liked by many people around him. "Wanpaku"
is actually another way of pronouncing "Kazuhiro" in Japanese.
He started this project in the middle of 1950s, when Masaru Ibuka, President
of Sony at that time, appealed to him, "Silicon is indispensable to semiconductor
industry", so please establish domestic silicon industry in Japan for
the sake of the future prosperity of Japanese semiconductor industry.
But at that time, the wafer diameter was only 25 to 28mm in CZ method, and
22 to 25mm in FZ method. Since there was no industry standard of measuring
method, of which the contamination data in silicon was one example, and the
data varied from company to company. To improve this situation, he organized
the “Special Committee on Silicon Technology" inside Japan Electronic
Industry Development Association, and made the standard of measuring method.
In addition, he experienced the difficulty of diverseness of users’ need,
such as crystal diameter, electric conductivity, resistivity, dislocation
density and lifetime. Answering in my interview, he sighed, "We had a
dilemma between meeting individual users’ requests and cost increase."
(By courtesy of Makiko Maeda)