Energy-Efficient Semiconductor Manufacturing: Establishing an Ecological Operating Curve

Latest governmental policies aim to mitigate the carbon impact on climate and accelerate the transition towards carbon neutrality by imposing stronger regulations for companies. The semiconductor industry emits carbon dioxide caused by its large amounts of consumed energy. At the same time, machine sensors tracking consumption are rare, and the share of fixed and variable energy consumption is often unknown. To detect the individual energy consumption types of a wafer fab, a process- and infrastructure-oriented discrete-event simulation model is developed that serves as a tool to determine the plant energy consumption within a fab. The obtained shares are validated with existing data. In parallel, a novel enery efficiency curve is constructed and verified by extending the concept of the well-studied Operating Curve. It incorporates the relationship between utilization and energy efficiency and adds an ecological viewpoint to the so far only economically motivated concept.