Making microelectronics research more sustainable: environmental assessment of an academic cleanroom

Research facilities with a focus on microelectronics hold potential for supporting a cleaner digital transformation. Their stringent work conditions in cleanrooms, however, are barely studied from an environmental perspective other than their energy efficiency. The goal of this paper is to quantify the environmental impacts of a case-study cleanroom dedicated to research on microelectronics. The life cycle assessment methodology was applied with a focus on the cleanroom’s operations. As expected, a contamination-free environment has a high energy demand (4,400 kWh/m 2 ) that generates 56% of the facility’s impact on global warming and 97% on fossil resource scarcity. Purchasing renewable energy can halve the carbon emissions of cleanrooms. However, our study also shows that untreated air emissions, and the consumption of gases and metals are major areas of concern. We encourage researchers to investigate new ways of recovering metals from their processes, especially critical raw materials, that may later be translated into larger-scale strategies for the microelectronics industry. In addition, optimizing and sharing the use of the facilities with more institutions can be the way forward to preventing the construction of additional academic and industrial cleanrooms. Academic cleanrooms may then become a lighthouse for circular and less harmful electronics.