Sustainability Considerations in Microelectronics Industry

Abstract

Examination of semiconductor processes involved in manufacturing of microelectronic devices and circuits reveals that there is a considerable wastage of materials, expensive gases, chemicals and energy, besides substantial addition to environment pollution by toxic effluents in case proper care is not taken to neutralize them before their release from the plants. The outcome of recent developments can effectively be used to minimise such wastages and make the processes more benign to the environment besides being resource consumption efficient. This is going to be a significant step in light of extremely heavy demands being put in, in terms of silicon and other semiconductor devices and circuits, by the fast growth of information technology. It so happens that in most of the processes in use, excess amount of reactant species are employed to produce desired changes as well as depositing thin films of different kinds and more energy is put to use in the system to produce energetic reactant species. These could be reduced heavily, if involved processes are understood properly. With the advent of ultra large scale integration (ULSI), the concept of low thermal budget process development is one step towards this concept of minimizing energy usage. Similarly, wafer cleaning technology is attracting attention to minimize the chemicals consumption and environmental pollution control. Keeping in view the overall extremely large scale production of semiconductor devices and circuits world-wide, the cumulative effect of these smaller savings could finally sum to an extremely large amount to affect the overall economy in this context. Following the guidelines of Sustainable Resource Consumption, in this context, appears to be highly rewarding and worth considering. Some of the basic ideas involved are discussed here to highlight the importance of the study under consideration. Efforts have been made here to search for better ways based on recent findings to incorporate them as viable alternatives.