Exactly six months ago, I talked here about pollution coming from disassembling computers and monitors. (Check "Why tech pollution's going global" if you weren't a reader at that time.)
Today, we'll speak about another kind of pollution caused by the high-tech industry. This time, the responsible is the semiconductor industry and our guide is Susan Moran
It’s the $140 billion semiconductor industry’s dirty not-so-little secret: Behind the clean rooms that churn out millions of chips every year, a filthy manufacturing process uses millions of pounds of noxious compounds, billions of gallons of water to wash them away, and a flood of toxins to dry it all out. The regimen is so poisonous that IBM and National Semiconductor recently have come under fire from environmental groups and employee lawsuits that allege clean-room jobs cause severe health problems, even death.
But where there’s a problem, there’s a technology waiting to solve it. A promising green chip-manufacturing process is emerging from the least likely of places -- Los Alamos National Laboratory, the world’s premier weapons lab. Known as Scorr, or supercritical carbon dioxide resist remover, the process requires no water, few of the nasty chemicals used in traditional wafer cleansing, and no drying. Scorr could save billions of dollars, conserve water, and help semiconductors grow ever smaller. "This technology could transform the industry," says Craig Taylor, leader of the Los Alamos team holding the Scorr patent.
Chip manufacturing relies on photolithography. Unfortunately, this leads to the usage of many toxic substances, like sulfuric acid or isopropyl alcohol.
The Scorr process works to replace these dangerous chemicals with supercritical carbon dioxide -- CO² that’s been placed under extreme pressure to give it the solvency of a liquid and the mobility of a gas. It removes the resist in about half the time and leaves almost no residue.
Not only Scorr is friendlier to our environment, it has a cost advantage compared to traditional processes.
IBM and Intel already are using Scorr -- at least for pilot projects. So it seems that Scorr is good news for all of us, particularly for those living near a semiconductor factory releasing toxic waters and vapors.
Here is the end of the article.
At Los Alamos, the stakes are also high for Craig Taylor and colleague Kirk Hollis. "If this isn’t in full production in two years," Hollis predicts, "we’ll be working somewhere else."
Source: Susan Moran, Wired Magazine, Issue 10.11, November 2002
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