Sustainable Electronics

European semiconductor companies need to collaborate to enhance the sustainability of semiconductor production and usage. Nokia and ZEISS have initiated a partnership to create a generally recognized sustainability framework. This collaboration aims to identify critical areas and propose measures for improvement. The IPCEI ME/CT community will benefit from shared knowledge and insights gained through this cooperation. The framework will be presented, which will include sustainability examples from the semiconductor equipment sector and from the semiconductor application industry.

The issue of electronics repair being deemed not worth the time and effort, leading to an increasing amount of electronic waste, is a growing concern. This is primarily due to the complexity of modern electronics, the rapid advancement of technology, and the lack of readily available repair information or expertise for consumers. Many electronic devices are designed in a way that makes them difficult or expensive to repair, encouraging consumers to discard old devices and buy new ones instead. 
A novel approach to electronics fault location that enables efficient, component-level diagnostics and repairs can save time, reduce costs, and conserve resources in several key ways.

Benefits for the audience:
- Understand the basics of the circular economy in electronics recycling
- Get to know the essential shredders and post shredder recycling processes
- Be able to understand the derivatives for the product design process on the basis of selected automotive electronic components
- Gain points of contact and motivation for an in-depth look at own electronic products

Onsite capabilities for repair of spare parts and electronic components as well as heat recovery solutions, energy saving and recycling.

The environmental impact of electronics manufacturing is not just limited to waste creation but also raises concerns about air pollution, water and soil contamination in production processes. To overcome these challenges, the Interreg Central Europe Project "CIRCOTRONIC" brings together scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy makers from nine manufacturing regions including Bavaria in a transnational network of regional circular labs. Together, they develop solutions and promote tools for more circular value chains especially for small and mid cap enterprises in electronics. The presention briefly highlights the project, the tools and highlights the response of german (bavarian) SMEs to these challenges. 

The EU Battery Passport is a worldwide discussion topic by now. As the implementation requirements and timelines are ramping up, battery suppliers are challenged to solve the final step of the battery passport implementation. This presentation will cover a proposed passport implementation that integrates one key component in the Battery Management System (BMS), a ‘secure element’ device with a specific battery passport applet as firmware on it, that will handle most of the complex passport-related tasks, without the need for architecture or processor changes. This presentation highlights the secure element integration up to the implementation of a cloud-connected battery system to form a complete cell-to-cloud secure environment.

The digital exchange of important technical data along the complex supply chain of products has been the objective of the Gaia-X/Catena-X dataspace architecture project. Thus, creating a digital twin for products and processes provides the opportunity to assess the environmental impact of the product as well. The current Semiconductor-X project which started in summer 2024 is based on the previous projects and aims to specify and develop the dataspace architecture for the semiconductor industry supply chain.  
      
Addressing environmental implications of the semiconductor supply chain, application cluster 3 is focused on determining the environmental burden and improvement potential based on life cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies vertically and horizontally along the value chain.
The aim is to create a standardized semantic LCA data model in the digital twin (AAS) which is stored locally at the companies in accordance with the Catena-X/Manufacturing-X architecture that can be exported and exchanged while maintaining data sovereignty at the company level.

A main challenge lies in standardizing a methodology and data architecture which allows for a sequential assessment of the chip manufacturing process including all scope 3 related impacts of the utilized equipment, material and other consumables. In addition, the semiconductor fab's infrastructure needs to be calculated proportionately. The key concept is to define so called "uniform identifiers" per each intermediated product. Ultimately, machine learning and statistical mathematics methods will be used to identify the potential savings in emissions, energy and resources at process and plant levels.