Purer than pure: how purity reshapes the upstream materiality of the semiconductor industry

2025-09-23

AI Summary

This study addresses the semiconductor industry’s stringent demand for ultra-high-purity, multi-element materials—and the associated environmental and supply chain vulnerabilities. Moving beyond conventional mineral-resource perspectives, we propose a dual-dimensional analytical framework centered on “elemental diversity” and “purity,” integrating material provenance tracing with supply chain network analysis to systematically identify upstream critical material sources, latent stakeholders, and cross-sectoral dependencies. Our findings reveal that semiconductor manufacturing is profoundly reliant on the chemical industry for ultra-pure precursors and specialty reagents; supply chain reconfiguration has intensified both synergistic collaboration and systemic vulnerability with the foundational chemical sector. The study uncovers the long-overlooked material foundations of digital infrastructure and proposes a materials-flow-oriented policy intervention pathway and a novel industry-coordination paradigm to advance sustainable digital transformation.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Semantic Web
• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Other Foundations of Planning, Routing & Scheduling

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity
• Social Networks and Social Media: Social media analysis through the lenses of networks

Abstract

Growing attention is given to the environmental impacts of the digital sector, exacerbated by the increase of digital products and services in our globalized societies. The materiality of the digital sector is often presented through the environmental impacts of mining activities to point out that digitization does not mean dematerialization. Despite its importance, such a narrative is often restricted to a few minerals (e.g., cobalt, lithium) that have become the symbols of extractive industries. In this paper, we further explore the materiality of the digital sector with an approach based on the diversity of elements and their purity requirements in the semiconductor industry. Semiconductors are responsible for manufacturing the key building blocks of the digital sector, i.e., microchips. Given that the need for ultra-high purity materials is very specific to the semiconductor industry, a few companies around the world have been studied, revealing new critical actors in complex supply chains. This highlights strong dependencies towards other industrial sectors with mass production and the need for a deeper investigation of interactions with the chemical industry, complementary to the mining industry.

Problem

• Investigating environmental impacts of semiconductor industry's purity requirements
• Exploring material dependencies beyond traditional mining for digital technologies
• Analyzing supply chain complexities involving chemical industry for ultra-pure materials

Innovation

• Focuses on element diversity and purity requirements
• Analyzes ultra-high purity materials in semiconductor manufacturing
• Investigates supply chain dependencies on chemical industry