The Environmental Footprint of IC Production: Meta-Analysis and Historical Trends

Pirson, Thibault;Delhaye, Thibault;Pip, Alex;Le Brun, Grégoire;Bol, David;et.al.
(2022) ESSDERC 2022 - IEEE 52nd European Solid-State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC) — Location: Milan, Italy (19.September.2022)

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Abstract
Given the ubiquity of electronic devices and the increasing technical challenges to continue CMOS technology downscaling following Moore's Law, it becomes critical to better quantify the environmental impacts of IC production. In this context, this paper compares 22 key relevant sources, from scientific literature, commercial state-of-the-art databases, industry roadmaps, and foundries CSR reports, over the period 2010–2020. Three environmental indicators, i.e., carbon footprint, primary energy, and water consumption, are considered and normalized per silicon area. Despite a significant variability between the sources, we observe a clear increase of the environmental footprint with technology downscaling. We then use historical data from foundries to analyze the long-term evolution of environmental impacts normalized to the silicon area over 40 years. We highlight the arduous challenge of further decreasing environmental indicators per cm2 below these values. As the global IC production volumes keep on increasing, it raises serious concerns regarding the sustainability of the IC production sub-sector and calls for rethinking the road ahead with sobriety.
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Pirson, T., Delhaye, T., Pip, A., Le Brun, G., Raskin, J.-P., & Bol, D. (2022). The Environmental Footprint of IC Production: Meta-Analysis and Historical Trends. ESSDERC 2022 - IEEE 52nd European Solid-State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC), pp. 352-355. https://doi.org/10.1109/essderc55479.2022.9947198