Dmitri Petrovykh, INL – “Some companies might discover that they work more with SSbD than they know”

We interviewed Dmitri Petrovykh, Corporate Expert at INL, to hear more about the latest trends within SSbD in electronics and what he is working on within IRISS as the representative for the electronics value chain.

Hi Dmitri Petrovykh, Corporate Expert at INL! Tell us about INL
INL stands for International Iberian Nanotechnology laboratory, so the primary area of expertise is nanotechnology. At INL, we have a medium-sized fabrication facility similar to the ones that the industry uses to make modern electronics. We have connections both to researchers and the industry looking into future technologies. In short, we are bridging the experience of the academic researchers and industry applications in electronics.

So you are both doing research and applying it in reality?
Modern production facilities use quite advanced tools and are quite expensive, so it costs billions to build a new production facility. It means that if a company needs to introduce a material for performance reasons, that material will probably be on the market in about 10 years. The company will not stop the production in the meantime, so one of the functions that research and technology organisations like INL perform is that new technologies and materials can be tested. We have tools that are quite similar and compatible with what the production facilities use, but in our facility, we can mix standard and experimental work. We work with testing and development of the processes. People often have to spend 2-3 years testing different ideas before succeeding. Once this kind of a process for new materials has been tested, then it becomes eligible to be tried by the industry and we can send the “recipe” so that the industry can start to produce the actual devices.

Tell us about your work in IRISS
In IRISS, one of my jobs is to introduce SSbD at industry events. One of the biggest challenges is the general low awareness about SSbD. When we started the project, there were several strategic research and innovation agendas. The semiconductor industry is famous for developing such documents, and in the one that was current when the project started, there was only one paragraph about sustainability. It essentially said that the chips we make will help others be more sustainable. When talking to someone about sustainability, that was the only thing that people really could relate to. During the lifetime of the project, the situation has been changing. In the latest version of the strategic research and innovation agenda, there are roughly 20 pages on sustainability. At the large industry events there are now dedicated sessions on sustainability. The awareness is spreading, but on more technical industry events, the awareness is still quite low. The community is definitely growing though, and the situation is much better than a few years ago.

What’s driving this shift to sustainability?
Legislation and regulation tend to have strong effects in specific areas. One example is that in 2030, the EU will decide if they will ban the single-use small coin-cell batteries. That led to a new industry growing in Europe, the so-called indoor solar. This was a direct response to the prospect of regulation. Right now, in Europe, there are about three companies that are developing different sectors of this technology, using many of the production methods and materials that have been developed in the electronics and semiconductor industry.

For big multinational companies, part of the shift is a marketing strategy. There is some interest from consumers for products that have a sustainability claim, but most consumers are not willing to trade performance for sustainability. Electronics is one of the areas where consumers are expecting continuously increasing performance. If there is a choice between performance and sustainability, most consumers will choose performance.

The majority of the large companies often introduce certain aspects of sustainability. One of the big drivers in terms of competition has been Apple that has been pushing some sustainability and fair labor practices. When one of the major companies is starting to talk about it and starts pushing the supply chain, then these are the kind of initiatives that other major players will try to adopt as well.

Year after year, more sustainable practices are being added. Now with the Chips Act funding, the idea is to build some of the fabrication facilities in Europe and the US. For the last decades, most of the new construction has been in China and Taiwan. Now that the industry are facing the prospect of building new facilities in the west, concerns that the local communities may have need to be addressed, like the effects on water.

What are the challenges for your value chain when it comes to SSbD?
A lot of companies that adopt SSbD don’t know it is SSbD. They use other terminology, like environmentally friendly, sustainability practices, safety practices, and a lot of it has to do with design, but they never identify it as SSbD. Some companies might discover that they work more with SSbD than they know.

One of the big challenges when it comes to the framework is that the electronics production is a materials transformation industry. When people think about sustainability, they often think about the amount of the material. The total mass for electronics that is produced is not very high, so when the industry looks at the SSbD practices, it ends up having to look more at the processes rather than the final product. A lot of energy and resources are used, but in the end, it is a small quantity. People need to think broader and more creatively about what the most relevant sustainability practices are to this sector compared to other manufacturing sectors where there is a certain bulk of something that is manufactured.

What can companies that want to recycle and avoid incineration of for example critical raw materials do?
The biggest advances in the last couple of years have been on the design perspective. This is a good example of the consequences not included in the “headline” topics of regulation. One of the big areas of regulation in consumer products has been the right to repair. The idea is that it should be possible to repair certain products rather than simply disposing of them. In case of electronics, part of the challenge is that the products are complex.

For example, early models of iPhones have been designed to be difficult to repair. To comply with the right to repair, the design had to change so that it would be possible to take something apart without breaking it. The number of consumers who will do so is quite small, however, professionals can now much easier do repairs. Apple has been working on specific robots that can separate and detect different materials, so instead of grinding the phone to dust, it is possible to disassemble rather than just destroy. That can make it a bit easier to separate for example some of the critical raw materials. This is exactly the area where the design was the response to make things better and that is very much in the spirit of SSbD.

At the moment, when electronics are shipped for end-of-life processing to low-income countries, what tends to be economically viable is to collect the gold and destroy everything else in acid. That process is neither environmentally friendly nor safe for the people who perform it.

What advice do you have for companies that want to start working with SSbD?
In most cases when I talk with companies who have not thought too much about SSbD, my advice is to start small and try to take one component, process or product and then make an internal use case scenario. Often there are younger employees that can be more motivated to become more educated and then help to take on the SSbD perspective within the company.

For the larger companies, the practical first step is to locate a consultancy partner who is aware of the industry issues. Often in a big company it can be more complicated to start a new direction from scratch. Often the business leadership is more impressed by having a test scenario that was executed by an external partner and that they look at the financial and marketing aspects of it. Perhaps after that it might also be implemented internally.

Do you think IRISS has a role to play to help and encourage companies?
I think it could. I see the parallel with the evolution with the nanosafety thinking. 10 years ago when the first generation of nanosafety projects were being funded, many of them were expected to produce some kind of user-friendly tools, and basically everybody from their own homes could do a nanosafety evaluation. The tools have been produced, but we all know it takes some experience to use them and therefore an ecosystem of consultancies have emerged.

When I talk to small companies, there are often younger staff members who are motivated and interested to make a difference. If their management allows them to spend half a day per week on this, then they can actually make a difference at that scale.

Larger companies get professional help instead. One of the challenges is that the companies are more used to having professional help with the safety aspect, to both evaluate and design protocols and so on, but I think the sustainability part is less familiar. Even if they have the money, they don’t know who to hire. I think that IRISS would be in a good position to do brokering of services and some of the introduction to SSbD.

Is there anything you would like to add?
Within the electronics value chain, one of the really important considerations has been to try to have a good alignment between the regulatory pressure with the available technological capabilities. When certain regulatory pressure is applied before the technology is ready, it is often more efficient and cheaper for the industry, especially the larger companies, to fight the regulation than to actually implement it. That is an important aspect that needs to be considered by policymakers. I think it is really important to have the input from the main experts on the available technology and the manufacturing methods in the process. Then usually it leads to quite good collaboration between the two.

Read more about the electronics value chain