MANUFACTURING

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Producing computing devices is not the clean image it is cut out to be.

INTENSIVE MANUFACTURING

COMPUTERS REQUIRE

80%

OF LIFETIME ENERGY USED BY A COMPUTER IS DURING MANUFACTURING

Producing a single computer requires:

530 POUNDS

of fossil fuels

48 POUNDS

of chemicals

3000 POUNDS

of water

LOW ENTROPY MATTER

Computing components are extremely organized structures of matter.

The production intensity is orders of magnitude higher than traditional goods, consuming loads of energy, chemicals, and water.

First generation Intel Core i7 processor.

ENERGY

Digital technology is a product of cheap energy, power hungry production methods are inherent to its design.

As energy resources continue to fall, future cheap energy is not guaranteed.

CONVENTIONAL

MANUFACTURING

1 - 10 MJ

Megajoules consumed for 1Kg of finished product.

Producing semiconductors consumes

OVER 1,000X

more energy than traditional goods.

SEMICONDUCTOR

MANUFACTURING

10,000 - 100,000 MJ

Megajoules consumed for 1Kg of finished microchips.

CHEMICALS

Thousands of different chemicals, many in high quantities, are used throughout the manufacturing process.

Most are extremely toxic, and new ones with unknown consequences are constantly developed.

10 COMMON CHEMICALS USED

ALL TOXIC

ACETONE

Polishing of silicon wafers.

HYDROCHLORIC ACID

Photoelectrochemical etching.

ARSENIC

Increases semiconductor conductivity.

LEAD

Electroplated soldering.

ARSINE

Chemical vapor deposition.

METHYL CHLOROFORM

Washing.

BENZENE

Photoelectrochemical etching.

TOLUENE

Chemical vapor deposition.

CADMIUM

Creates a positive charge in silicon.

TRICHLOROETHYLENE

Washing.

LEGACY OF CONTAMINATION

Directly as a result of semiconductor production, Silicon Valley has the most toxic waste sites of any region in the entire USA.

Other areas where there is a history of electronics manufacturing, such as Upstate New York, has a similar problem.

Every large electronics manufacturer that began operations before the 1970s has a toxic waste site in its history.

Toxic waste sites, Silicon Valley.

WATER

The production process consumes huge amounts of ultra pure water, a special form of water that is 1000 times more pure than drinking water and requires a dozen processing steps to create.

A typical semiconductor manufacturing facility consumes

4.8 MILLION GALLONS

OF WATER EVERY DAY

This is equivalent to the consumption of

60 THOUSAND PEOPLE

FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR

ONE SPECK OF DUST

Microchips are assembled in super clean rooms, a single dust particle would ruin it.

Facilities need advanced filtration and circulation systems, the air is up to 100,000 times more pure than a hospital operating room.

Workers wear bunny suits not for their protection, but for the protection of the chips against any particles from a human body.

A semiconductor clean room.

A GLOBAL PROCESS

The supply chain for computing devices makes up the most sophisticated and complex supply chain system in human history.

Raw resources and components are produced and shipped all around the planet before final assembly.

The global computer supply chain visualized.

SHEER VOLUME

Semiconductors are produced in numbers that dwarf other products.

To function, a computer requires hundreds of components, including over 100 microchips.

INTERNET CONNECTED DEVICES IN BILLIONS

2015 - 2025

EXPLODING DEMAND

Any efficiency gains of digital technology will be absorbed by the growing footprint as the number of internet connected devices is expected to triple in the next 5 years.

SILICON WAFERS

The silicon wafer serves as the foundation upon which micro sized circuits are built.

Silicon is a type of sand. Turning it into the 99.9999999% pure, perfectly flat wafers required for microchips is complex and produces loads of waste.

A finished silicon wafer.

STEP 1

QUARTZITE

Silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, after oxygen. Quartzite consists almost exclusively of silicon dioxide grains.

STEP 2

ELECTRIC ARC FURNACE

At around 2000 degrees celsius, the quartzite is reduced with coke to metallurgical grade silicon in an electric arc furnace.

STEP 3

FLUIDIZED BED REACTOR

The silicon reacts with hydrochloric acid at 350 degrees celsius to produce trichlorosilane - an extremely volatile gas that boils at 31 degrees.

STEP 4

CVD REACTOR

After multiple distillations, the trichlorosilane is put into a chemical vapor deposition reactor. Here it is reduced with hydrogen at 1100 degrees celsius, polycrystalline silicon is deposited on electrically heated hyperpure silicon rods. The process takes an entire week.

STEP 5

POLYSILICON

The end result of the CVD reactor is polycrystalline silicon with only one foreign atom per 10 billion silicon atoms. The polysilicon is removed from the deposition rods, crushed, and undergoes chemical surface refining.

POLYCRYSTALLINE

STRUCTURE

MONOCRYSTALLINE

STRUCTURE

STEP 6

MONOCRYSTALLINE

The polycrystalline silicon is melted in a furnace at 1500 degrees celsius. Chemical dopants including arsenic and boron are added, these make the wafers semiconductors. Using the Czochralski method, a silicon ingot with a monocrystalline structure is grown.

STEP 7

GROUND AND CUT

After extensive grinding to achieve a perfect cylinder of a set diameter, the monocrystalline ingot is cut into thin slices using a diamond tipped wire saw.

STEP 8

FLATTENED

The individual slices undergo more grinding to smooth out the edges. Then, in a lapping machine, the surfaces are ground down to remove saw marks and improve total flatness. Final wafer thickness is as low as 275 micrometers.

STEP 9

ETCHED AND POLISHED

They are etched in acids to remove any surface damage from grinding, then polished in an ultrafine slurry to achieve a mirror surface with a roughness on an atomic scale. Final cleaning and packaging is done in a vacuum clean room.

FINISHED PRODUCT

The end result is a 99.9999999% pure, perfectly flat, crystalline silicon semiconductor substrate, ready for micro circuits to be built on it.

9.4 KG

Raw Polysilicon

1 KG

Finished Wafers

REQUIRED FOR

ONE SQUARE CENTIMETER OF WAFER

0.16 GRAMS

CONSUMES

WATER

20,000 GRAMS

CHEMICALS

46 GRAMS

ELEMENTAL GASSES

556 GRAMS

AND GENERATES

TOXIC WASTES

7,800 GRAMS

The waste consists mostly of nitrate compounds, causing ecosystem unbalance.

Most silicon wafer production is done in China where there is little environmental regulation.

SILICON PRODUCTION

2018

MICROCHIPS

The finished wafer is now ready to have microchip circuits built on it.

The entire process for constructing a single microchip can take up to 3 months and involve well over 1000 individual steps.

BILLIONS

A single chip can have tens of billions of transistors, each being as small as 7 nanometers in size - 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

A silicon wafer with micro circuits etched on.

PROCESSING

The following steps are performed many times in various sequences, building layer upon layer of complex circuitry.

3D section of a microchip.

Many layers of circuitry are built on top of another.

LAYER FORMATION

PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY

The wafer is coated with photosensitive resist chemicals that harden when exposed to UV light.

In a dark room, light is project through an image mask of the layer design, then a minitizuration lens, and finally onto the wafer. The pattern is hardened on the wafer.

Etching chemicals are then used to remove areas of material not covered by the hardened photoresist.