Environmentally Friendly and Contributing Products 2020

Every year, we develop new environmentally friendly and contributing products. Here are some typical examples from the current fiscal year.

While contributing to global environmental conservation and reduction of environmental impact through our products and its applications, we have promoted development of new technologies and sales of products to reduce such impact from the products themselves based on our guidelines for "Environmentally Friendly and Contributing Products" as follows.

Environmentally Friendly Products

Products that are designed to have less impact on the environment, such as by reducing the amount of waste or designing products that are easy to recycle, and that have improved one or more of the following compared to conventional products.

Smaller, thinner and lighter
Power saving
Longer service life
Products with reduced or eliminated hazardous substances (hazardous substances: RoHS 10 substances, the environment-related substances to be controlled set by us, etc.)
Reusability (reuse)
Recyclability (recycling)
Ease of disposal (ease of disassembly in case of equipment)

Environmentally Contributing Products

The products themselves or the final products using them that contributes to and are used for applications such as the conservation of the global environment.

Prevention of global warming, diffusion of new and renewable energy sources
Prevention of ozone depletion, air pollution, water pollution, and soil contamination; analysis of pollutants
Analysis of chemical substances contained in products, evaluation of toxicity of chemical substances
Reduction, separation and disposal of waste

Case Studies

●Optical Pinhole Inspection Unit

C15477 pinhole inspection unit is used to inspect microhole defects in fuel cell separators and pouch-type rechargeable battery laminate packaging. These are important components used in fuel cell vehicles and electric vehicles, for which high reliability is required. This product contributes to high-precision, high-speed inspections that support the production of core components for a low-carbon society.

●Infrared LED

L15895-0430M is a high-power mid-infrared LED with a peak emission wavelength of 4.3 μm, which has been realized using our proprietary crystal growth and process technologies. Light with a wavelength of 4.3 μm is absorbed by carbon dioxide and is used as a light source for CO2 monitors and other environmental applications. Compared to conventional products, the area of the LED chip has been reduced to about half, and the radiant flux relative to power consumption has been reduced to about 2.7 times, realizing resource and power savings.

●CMOS linear Image Sensor

S13014 series is a high-sensitivity CMOS linear image sensor with a vertical pixel photosensitive area. It offers high sensitivity and high tolerance even in the ultraviolet region, and is used in various applications such as encoders, position detection, and spectrometers. The surface-mount package and 5V single power supply operation make it easy to handle. Compared to the conventional dual in-line package, the volume and weight are reduced by approximately 50% and 60%, respectively, contributing to downsizing and weight reduction of equipment and resource conservation.

●FTIR Engine

The FTIR engine is a compact Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy module that combines an optical interferometer and control circuit in a palm-sized housing and is highly sensitive to the near-infrared region from 1.1 μm to 2.5 μm. It is expected to be applied in a wide range of situations where timely measurement has been difficult in the past, such as pre-harvest inspection of agricultural crops, soil analysis (e.g., on-site measurement of soil oil contamination not limited to fields), and plastic sorting (e.g., sorting flame retardants contained in home appliances).

Application Images

Near-infrared absorption of plastics containing flame retardants

●PMA-12 Photonic Multichannel Analyzer

PMA-12 is a compact spectral measurement system integrating a spectrometer and a photodetector. The low-light model C14880-01 retains the wide measurement wavelength range and high sensitivity of the previous model, while realizing low-light by reviewing the optical layout, reducing power consumption by about 30%, and reducing the housing volume by about 30%. It is also used in the development and inspection of LEDs and OLEDs, for which needs are increasing in the low-carbon society.