Semiconductor Water Crisis: AlixLabs and NSS Water Collaborate on Sustainable Ultrapure Water Solutions

AlixLabs and NSS Water have partnered to develop sustainable ultrapure water (UPW) management solutions for semiconductor manufacturing. Co-financed by the EU’s ASCENT+ program with a project value of approximately 28,000 euros, the initiative is supported by Fraunhofer IPMS’s metrology expertise for advanced defect and contamination control.

The collaboration addresses the semiconductor industry’s growing water consumption, which has risen 20–30% in recent years. A typical chip manufacturing facility uses up to 10 million gallons of UPW daily, equivalent to the water needs of a city of 300,000 people. Producing UPW is costly, requiring 60 to 350 times more expense than drinking water due to energy-intensive and chemical-heavy processes. With 40% of chip production facilities projected to be in high-water-risk areas by 2030, the need for efficient water recycling is critical.

The partnership integrates NSS Water’s nano-pure water (NPW) technology with AlixLabs’ APS™ patterning process to reduce water usage, chemical consumption, and operational costs while improving recycling methods. Fraunhofer IPMS’s metrology ensures precise contamination control, enabling testing of NPW on 300-millimeter wafers and wafer cleaning processes.

Reza Jafari Jam, Research Director at AlixLabs, emphasized the role of water in ...