Development of an abatement modelling software for industry-wide consistent monitoring of direct greenhouse gas emissions

Context

The semiconductor industry is not only growing rapidly, but its manufacturing processes are increasing in complexity, requiring more and more energy, water, and materials. With those natural resources already under strain, to remain compatible with planetary boundaries (e.g., to align with the drastic emissions reduction required to mitigate climate change), it has become critical for technological advancement to integrate environmental sustainability “by design”. To tackle this challenge, the SSTS program at imec is working along with partners from across the value chain to assess and improve the sustainability of the semiconductor industry. The cornerstone of this endeavour is the development of a “virtual fab”, modelling a high-volume manufacturing semiconductor fab, with all the related flows and their environmental impacts (accessible through the imec.netzero webapp).

When assessing their environmental impact, an important challenge fabs face is accurate monitoring of their greenhouse gas emissions. The deployment of abatement systems allows to destroy most of those gases before releasing them in the atmosphere; however, by-products are also created in the abatement chamber, which may themselves have a significant global warming potential, which complicates the tracking of the emissions of the fab. To solve this challenge, the IPPC has released an accounting methodology for the industry. However, this methodology is not straightforward to implement in practice, and may as a result not be consistently followed, which in turn makes it difficult to really assess (and hence improve) the direct emissions of semiconductor fabs.

Objective

The objective of this internship is to design and release a software tool that implements the IPCC greenhouse gas accounting methodology such that direct emissions can be estimated in a consistent way across the entire semiconductor industry. Particular care shall be taken to ensure the tool has an easy-to-use yet flexible interface (in the form of a webapp and/or an API) to ensure it can be broadly adopted. Crucially, the model shall also fit right into the imec.netzero virtual fab modelling tool, enhancing the quality of the latter.

Responsibilities

You will actively engage in the design, coding, and testing of the abatement modelling tool. This will involve working closely with our research team to understand the nuances of semiconductor manufacturing processes and abatement systems in particular. You will also closely collaborate with the coding team to ensure seamless integration of your tool within the imec.netzero fab model. Your contribution will play a pivotal role in the assessment and improvement potential of direct emissions from the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

Skills and Learning Objectives:

Applicants are expected to have a background in computer science or software engineering.

They will gain proficiency and enhance their skills in the following key areas:

• Programming (Python (must), JavaScript (desired), other relevant languages (option))
• Professional Software Engineering (architecture, documentation, clean code)
• User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Design
• Semiconductor Manufacturing Processes, Abatement systems (optional)
• Environmental Impact Assessment, Climate change (optional)