DDOWA group conducts “materiality” analysis to identify issues that should be focused from a long-term standpoint. We conducted a survey of these issues in each operating company in 2009. Some employees from each operating company gathered together and discussed various issues in a camp style meeting in 2010.

What is materiality?...

It refers to a set of issues that are important to a company and should focus from a long-term standpoint. When identifying them, whether a society and stakeholders are interested in them or not should be taken into consideration.

Identified DOWA group’s materiality related items are shown in the Materiality Matrix to the right. Results of the Review Meeting and opinions from various stakeholders (from questionnaire to stockholders, questionnaire from investors, comments on our Web CSR Report) are also reflected into the matrix. This CSR report was prepared, referring to the matrix. We will continue to review how these results should be reflected into CSR activities across our company and how they should be connected with our business activities.

The DOWA group is committed to supplying materials and parts that contribute to energy saving in end products and the reduction of environmental loads as well as conservation of resources and environment through metal recycling and waste disposal businesses after our products are used.

As most of our products are metal parts and materials, our products are not directly visible to consumers. However, DOWA’s materials and parts are used in many products, including home electric appliances, communication equipment and automobiles, which are indispensable to our way of modern life. In addition, our metal materials play an important role in the creation of solar panels and windmills that generate power to drive those products, batteries that store electricity and power transmission grids.

Now we would like to introduce DOWA’s eco-products that contribute to energy saving and new energy sources.

Solar photovoltaic generation together with wind and geothermal power generation is rapidly being implemented and widely-used renewable energy source. One of the main applications of DOWA Hightech’s silver powders is silver pastes used for electrodes of solar cells (crystalline silicon solar cells). Electrodes must have low resistance and allow highly precise wiring. Silver paste is positioned as an important material that significantly affects product performance. DOWA develops, proposes and stably supplies silver powders of various grain sizes (spherical or flaky) and optimized distribution of grain sizes requested by silver paste manufacturers both in Japan and globally, as it greatly contributes to improvement of performance of solar cells.

Devices using nitride-based HEMT epitaxial substrates withstand high voltage better than traditional silicon-base substrates. They have low electric resistance and reduce electric loss to one third that of the traditional substrates, which dramatically enhancing energy saving effects. As they produce less heat when they operate, the means of heat dissipation can be significantly simplified, greatly easing the size reduction of power supply systems.

DOWA Semiconductor Akita succeeded in manufacturing gallium nitride-based epitaxial wafer by growing gallium nitride-based HEMT structure on silicon substrates and manufacturing the wafer of large-diameter up to 6 inches. In addition, we developed an innovative layer structure and realized the world’s highest level of technology that can stably supply products that withstand high voltage exceeding 1,000 volts.

DOWA’s epitaxial substrates are widely used as power devices for power supplies for servers and home electric appliances, high frequency applications for the antennas of base stations of mobile phones. In the future they will be used in a wide range of fields including hybrid cars and electric vehicles as the next generation energy saving materials that can reduce environmental burdens.

Power modules that convert DC into AC and precisely control current flow and voltage fluctuation are widely used in electric appliances and electricity control equipment. In designing these power modules, how to dissipate heat generated from power semiconductor chips is important. Traditional power modules have difficulty in dissipating heat from high performance semiconductor chips embedded in them, such as circuit boards, heat-dissipating parts and cooling parts are bonded by soldering or using grease.

DOWA’s power devices that were developed in cooperation with Nippon Light Metal succeeded in achieving high cooling performance by integrating circuit boards with heat-dissipating parts. We succeeded in increasing heat transfer performance by 50%, compared to traditional methods and achieving lighter weight with a simpler structure using aluminum for components of the cooling system, enabling energy and resource saving and better performance.

More and more efficient use of electricity and energy saving are required these days. Our power devices are widely used in and contribute to motor controls of electric cars and power supply controls of photovoltaic generation and wind power generation.