Catalytic technology removes toxic chemicals from microchip manufacturing wastewater

Semiconductor manufacturing is a fastidiously clear enterprise. Parts are washed a number of occasions to take away impurities, drawing on huge quantities of purified water and different chemical compounds.

The manufacturing plants use large quantities of water. For instance, the world’s largest semiconductor producer, TSMC, makes use of three billion metric tons of water per day of their three Taiwanese science parks—3 times the day by day water provide of Sydney.

Professor Lengthy Nghiem, Director of the UTS Middle for Know-how in Water and Wastewater, is harnessing the ability of chemistry to assist the business recycle extra water and transfer in direction of a extra sustainable future.

“With the booming demand for microchips to power artificial intelligenceand huge volumes of water being used to manufacture them, companies need to recycle at least 90% of their water to not deplete local supplies. More than 100 specialty chemicals are used in microchip manufacturing. We need to remove the worst of these chemicals to get clean water at the end of the process,” he says.

“The two most problematic of these chemicals are hydrogen peroxide, used in surface cleaning, and triazole, for corrosion prevention. Both are very toxic and don’t break down easily.”

Working with water tech start-up Infinite Water Worldwide (IWI) Australia, Professor Nghiem and his crew, together with fellow researcher Affiliate Professor Cuong Ton-That, have developed a brand new catalytic expertise that breaks down these two essential pollution.

“We use a catalytic process. We don’t filter out the contaminants but instead have an oxidation agent that breaks them down in a very targeted way,” he says.

“We pack this agent into a plug-and-play unit that fits into wastewater infrastructure and flushes contaminated water to clean it. We degrade the pollutants to the point where the water becomes safe for any subsequent processes for recycling or eventual disposal.”

“The current treatment process for making microchips has been around (for) almost 100 years. We’re not trying to change this process, we’re trying to add to and utilize all of the existing infrastructure.”

Two of the world’s largest logic chip makers are working with IWI Australia to guage this revolutionary expertise on their wastewater operations.

“Usually, greater than 10% of the capital expenditure of those superior semiconductor manufacturing fabrication vegetation (or fabs) are for water use and water recycling. This provides as much as billions of {dollars},” says Matthew Ng, Founder and CEO of IWI Australia.

“We’re looking to help them sustainably recycle water more cost-efficiently at this huge scale. This industrial disruptive innovation can address significant pain points for these companies.”

“Once they can remove specialist chemicals at a much lower cost, it allows them to recycle most of the water and discharge any excess wastewater safely into the environment.”

The expertise has been patented to be used with hydrogen peroxidedemonstrating its environment friendly elimination of high-concentration peroxide in just some minutes.

A patent is pending for triazole destruction, the place it has been proven to degrade as much as 90% of the pollutant in simply an hour in an revolutionary and easy course of.