NSF Convergence Accelerator Track I: FUTUR-IC: A Sustainable Microchip Manufacturing Alliance

人类生存和微芯片利益之间的平衡正受到对电子产品消费的无情和不可持续的需求的严重挑战。FUTUR-IC可持续微芯片制造全球联盟创建了自洽的3D技术，生态和劳动力解决方案，以维持半导体制造和信息系统行业的持续发展，该行业面临着晶体管尺寸，环境足迹和劳动力管道准备的限制。良好的企业需要基于对人类、地球和利润的影响的多维度决策。微芯片行业的前沿限制是：1）技术/利润：下一代应用（如AI，6 G，LiDAR等）的增强微芯片功能不再仅仅依赖于缩小晶体管的尺寸; 2）生态/地球：产品生命周期的净零环境影响对地球上的生命至关重要; 3）劳动力/人员：需要一个新的绿色识字的STEM劳动力的领导。FUTUR-IC将：1）让消费者受益：在2050年实现零环境影响的同时，改善生活; 2）培养未来创新者，加强全方位的劳动力培训：扩大微芯片技术的绿色素养，招募和留住K-Gray员工; 3）增加DEIA：支持领导力、性别、种族和文化背景的多样性，以确保研究从广泛的角度出发，塑造未来的技术轨迹; 4）改变全球微芯片供应链：在工艺和设计的环境和社会影响的约束下，提供连贯的技术发展。技术：晶体管的尺寸缩放正在接近原子尺寸，成本/能量/带宽密度要求挑战基础物理学。新兴的近期可持续解决方案是用于通信的光子学和用于计算的电子学，因此FUTUR-IC正在研究（i）可持续电子光子封装（EPP）的创新，其驱动器为净零工艺包络内的I/O 1 Pb/s，以获得低材料消耗、可靠、超低功耗和低插入损耗耦合，高带宽光纤到微芯片封装的平面，非平面，和可插拔的光学连接，（ii）UR 4的设计（升级、减少、再利用、再循环、维修）以尽量减少电子废物;以及（iii）PFAS测量和从芯片制造和封装工艺中去除以减少有毒流出物。生态：行业需要一个基于共识的分析和可量化的生命周期评估（LCA）工具包来指导路线图预测。FUTUR-IC凭借其综合性和跨学科的贡献，将在产品生命周期中建立分析能力，以获得有史以来第一个全面、快速、环境、社会和当前的数据驱动的品质指标。劳动力：Microchip的劳动力需求主要取决于产能、绿色素养和创新能力。 FUTUR-IC将创建一个绿色扫盲技能的创新劳动力，接受STEM，半导体技术和可持续发展的混合学习内容的教育，使用教学设计和引导-边缘学习科学，以提供一个课程，是有效的常年再技能和提高技能。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查支持的搜索.

The balance between human existence and microchip benefits is being severely challenged by a relentless and unsustainable appetite for electronics consumption. The FUTUR-IC Global Alliance for Sustainable Microchip Manufacturing creates self-consistent 3D technology, ecology, and workforce solutions to sustain the continued progress of the semiconductor manufacturing and the information systems industry, which is confronted with limits to transistor size, to its environmental footprint, and to its workforce pipeline readiness. Good business requires multi-dimensional decisions based on the consequences for people, planet, and profits. Frontier constraints in the microchip industry are: 1) Technology/Profits: Enhanced microchip functionality for next generation applications such as AI, 6G, LiDAR etc. can no longer depend solely on shrinking the dimensions of a transistor; 2) Ecology/Planet: Net Zero environmental impact for a product life cycle is critical to life on earth; 3) Workforce/People: Leadership from a new green-literate STEM workforce is required. Concurrently engineered solutions are expected to build a common learning curve to power the next 40 years of progress for the semiconductor industry.FUTUR-IC will: 1) Benefit consumers: Enhance life while targeting Net Zero environmental impact by 2050; 2) Foster future innovators and enhance full-spectrum workforce training: Extend green literacy in microchip technologies to recruit and retain from K-Gray; 3) Increase DEIA: Support diversity in leadership, gender, ethnicity, and cultural backgrounds, to ensure that research is informed by a broad range of perspectives to shape future technology trajectories; 4) Transform the global microchip supply chain: Provide coherent technology evolution within the constraints of the environmental and social impacts of processes and designs. Technology: Dimensional scaling of transistors is approaching atomic dimensions, with cost/energy/bandwidth-density requirements challenging fundamental physics. The emerging near-term sustainable solution is photonics for communication and electronics for computation, and hence FUTUR-IC is investigating (i) innovation in sustainable Electronic-Photonic Package (EPP) with I/O 1 Pb/s within a Net Zero process envelope, as its driver, to obtain low materials-consumption, reliable, ultralow power, and low insertion loss coupling, of high bandwidth fiber optics to the microchip package with planar, non-planar, and pluggable optical connection, (ii) Design for UR4 (upgrade, reduce, reuse, recycle, repair) to minimize e-waste; and (iii) PFAS measurement and removal from chip fabrication and packaging processes to reduce toxic effluent. Ecology: The industry needs a consensus-based analytical and quantifiable Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) toolkit to guide roadmap projections. FUTUR-IC with its integrative and interdisciplinary contributions will build the analytical capability in the product lifecycle to obtain the first-ever comprehensive, rapid, environmental, social, and current, data-driven figures of merit with footprints and handprints. Workforce: Microchip workforce needs are led by capacity, green-literacy, and capability for innovation. FUTUR-IC will create a green-literacy-skilled innovative workforce educated with blended learning content in STEM, semiconductor technology, and sustainability, using instructional design and leading-edge learning science to deliver a curriculum that is effective for perennial reskilling and upskilling.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.