Efficient and Unique System for Verifying Containment of Hazardous Substances

The European Union's directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) prohibits the use of certain hazardous substances. One of the targets of our environment protection program is to eliminate these substances from all Fujitsu brand products by the end of March 2006. To achieve this target, we are promoting green procurement and non-containment verification of these substances. We have developed a unique system to efficiently verify that several hundred thousand types of parts composed of various materials do not contain the RoHS-prohibited substances. This system has two elements. One is a substance containment probability chart that is based on an investigation of situations in which those substances are used. The other is a high-accuracy quantitative technique that uses simple X-ray fluorescent (XRF) spectrometry. This system enables us to efficiently verify non-containment by screening parts that have a high substance-containment probability and then accurately measuring substance concentrations using XRF spectrometry.