Semiconductor element sealed with an epoxy resin compound

In a process for producing a semiconductor device, the steps which comprise:

• preparing an epoxy resin compound for semiconductor sealing, said process comprising fusing a substance composed mainly of naturally-occurring SiO.sub.2, thereby making a natural fused silica, performing a chemical reaction on a silicon-containing substance which is not composed mainly of SiO.sub.2, thereby making synthetic silica composed mainly of SiO.sub.2, and mixing together an epoxy resin (A), a hardener (B) comprising at least two phenolic hydroxyl groups and/or naphtholic hydroxyl groups in the molecule, said synthetic silica and said natural fused silica obtained in said first step,
• wherein the total content of said natural silica and said synthetic silica is more than 85 wt % of the total amount of the resin compound,
• the content of synthetic silica and natural fused silica is 5-50 wt % and 95-50 wt %, respectively, of the total amount of silica and said epoxy resin (A) contains a biphenyl epoxy resin represented by formulae (I) or (II):
• ##STR3## wherein the R's identically or differently denote hydrogen atoms or monovalent organic groups with 1 to 4 carbons.