Infineon makes the environmental impact of its own chips transparent
In future, chip manufacturer Infineon will provide data on the ecological footprint of semiconductors. Customers will then be able to make better decisions.
Infineon chip family Aurix TC4X
(Image: Infineon)
Chip manufacturer Infineon already knows the product carbon footprint (PCF) of around half of its own products. This is the converted amount of climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2-equivalent) that is released during the production of the respective semiconductor component.
Infineon intends to communicate this PCF to its direct customers soon. The company has also announced that it will determine this data for all of its own products in the future.
Electronics developers will then be able to solder the most environmentally friendly chips possible into their own circuits to reduce their PCF.
Chip production consumes plenty of resources and energy
The production of semiconductor components requires a lot of energy. In addition, the mining and processing of the many high-purity primary products and operating materials also consume many resources and energy.
On the other hand, many chips only have a tiny silicon area (die) and some production steps are significantly more complex than others. Consequently, there are also major differences in PCF between chips with similar functions.
By selecting components with the lowest possible PCF, the ecological footprint of an electronic device can be reduced. In addition, a chip with many integrated functions can be more ecologically sound than building a similar circuit from several individual components.
However, to make such decisions, developers need specific information on the PCF of the individual components under consideration.
Information on environmental impact not mandatory
Several companies already publish ecological footprints of their respective devices, so-called Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs). However, only a few manufacturers – such as Apple as "Product Environmental Reports" – publish this data for most or all devices sold, as well as promptly and for product variants. This is because components that contain a particularly large number of chips, such as memory modules and SSDs, have a significant impact on the CO2 footprint for the production of the entire device. Depending on the RAM and SSD capacity as well as the production technology, different values result.
Paths to climate neutrality
Several chip manufacturers are working on making their production climate-neutral and thus reducing water consumption. Among other things, they are relying on green electricity. Infineon wants to be CO2-neutral by 2030.
Another building block is the reduction of emissions of perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) and perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS). These are used as process gases in chip production. For example, some chip manufacturers use hexafluoroethane (C2F6) for plasma etching, which contributes 12,340 times as much to global warming as the same amount of carbon dioxide. PFC abatement reduces the emission of such gases, but requires energy itself.
(ciw)