Rethinking Sustainability
Publish Date
27 MAR 2024
Overview
We are in the midst of the golden decade of semiconductors, despite temporary post-pandemic dips in the industry we have seen last year.
The growth challenge: How can the semiconductor industry double in size and become more sustainable at the same time?
We are in the midst of the golden decade of semiconductors, despite temporary post-pandemic dips in the industry we have seen last year. The global semiconductor market is forecast to roughly double in size in the next ten years, driven by an ever-increasing demand for computing power and data storage, recently fueled by the surge of (generative) AI. Smartphones become more powerful and require more computing power. Automobiles require more (and more powerful) chips to enhance road safety and self-driving features. All of this means: more computer chips and more materials to produce these chips.
A growing industry means technological advancement, many job opportunities and new product offerings that we are not even aware of today. Growth also means responsibility for our environment. Because one thing is clear: if our industry continues to do business as usual, our environmental footprint will become an ever greater burden.
Let’s look at the carbon emissions of the companies that make the world’s most popular electronic devices. Big tech players in this space have set themselves sustainability targets to reduce their carbon footprint, ideally to (net) zero. An important aspect of this ambition is reducing the footprint of semiconductor manufacturing. For example, around 40 % of a smartphone company’s carbon footprint today comes from the process of making integrated circuits.
Now let’s look at recent emission figures in our industry. Emissions of greenhouse gases per wafer are going down, that’s good news. However, the total emissions of the industry go up because of increasing volumes. Processors are becoming more energy efficient, but this is happening at a slower pace than their rapid growth. This is the growth challenge we are facing.
Material manufacturers have an important role in achieving the industry’s sustainability ambition
From the perspective of our customers, who operate major semiconductor fabrication facilities, there are two important ways that materials companies can move the needle on sustainability.
First, the process of making semiconductor chips is extremely energy intensive – and this is not just limited to the energy our customers use for making the chips themselves. Energy is also needed to produce the materials that go into chips – chemical synthesis, purification, and waste treatment all add to the energy footprint. As our customers push towards getting their energy from more renewable sources, we, as important members of their value chains, also have a part to play. This is one of the reasons that we have aggressively pursued renewable energy agreements. And it doesn’t stop at our customer’s shipping dock, either. Once a chip is made, one also has to consider all of the energy used to run these chips in servers and personal devices. Today, for example, global data centers consume around 340 TWh of electricity annually (this is more than half of Germany’s annual consumption) – both to run semiconductor chips and to provide the infrastructure to cool them while they are working, and that number is only expected to grow. Devising new, more energy-efficient chips and computing paradigms, including neuromorphic computing, depend heavily on material and process innovation.
Second, the materials that are used to make semiconductors can also have a footprint on the environment. For example, the photoresist processes that have enabled transistor scaling down to only a few nanometers across have typically included toxic solvents that need special handling, for example. Meanwhile, the etch gases used to make ever denser computer memories can contribute to global warming with a potency many times that of carbon dioxide. As the science and technology company behind the companies advancing digital living, we are meeting these challenges with material intelligence. We have already released our first generation of photoresist rinses based on green solvents, and we are working with our peers in the semiconductor climate consortium and our customers to help the industry adopt etch gases with lower global warming potential. We have taken many steps along our sustainability journey, but the rate of innovations can’t come quickly enough to meet the challenges before us.
AI is a game-changer
Historically, when looking for materials innovations, scientists turn to the periodic table. In the 1800s, scientists carefully measured atomic properties, used the collected data to make models, and came up with predictions. Mendeleev prediction of ekasilicon, now known as germanium, was a major feat of this early data science approach. Those early material discoveries fueled by data, and all of the subsequent discoveries that built upon them, played a part in creating today’s digital era (the first transistor, incidentally, was made from germanium).
Today, the process of material discovery is still the same data-driven enterprise, but AI and machine learning (ML) tools facilitate a step-change in materials research needed to address the complexity of chemistries we must use. We have shown that our data-driven models and predictions enable a more rapid discovery cycle, for example, 50 % faster for formulations in R&D.
We see an explosion of data and new models in material science, and these huge datasets enable rapid in-silico screening of performance and sustainability. For example, we were able to build a database of 65,000 potential etch molecules and models that predicted both the etch performance and the global warming potential of a gas. This process has already led to the discovery of new etch gases in our R&D lab, and we are working to couple generative AI to models like these to provide us with an even broader pipeline of novel candidates.
Fostering collaboration is key
Sustainability in our industry is a collective enterprise. The interdependency of sustainability on material properties, semiconductor manufacturing processes, and device performance and use mean that we must foster collaboration between suppliers, manufacturers and other stakeholder through digital platforms, such as Athinia. Here, all partners can share systematic, reliable and harmonized sustainability data in a secure environment. By correlating material and process data, AI can predict the performance and the full life-cycle view of sustainability. Material suppliers, for example, can screen numerous alternatives, based on data and digital models, to improve the speed and cost-effectiveness of bringing new, more sustainable materials to market.
In conclusion, the semiconductor industry requires a new way of thinking and collaborating. If we transform the way we operate across the entire value chain to a data-based and increasingly collaborative approach, we can already improve the manufacturing process, speed up material innovation and, ultimately, push forward sustainability across the semiconductor value chain. The key to reducing our industry’s environmental footprint is using the digital discovery tools we have at hand and collaborate with customers and partners. It is our responsibility as industry leaders to rethink our business to ensure that doubling production does not mean doubling our environmental footprint.