- Startup backed by Lam Capital reduces metal contaminated liquid waste by up to 90%
- Innovative tech shows environmental responsibility and business success can go hand in hand
The challenge: Semiconductor fabs use Lam Research’s plating tools to deposit the kilometers of metal wiring and the millions of bumps in nearly every chip produced worldwide. A byproduct of that process includes plating solutions containing copper, nickel, silver, or tin.
- Today, treating that waste requires it to be shipped offsite to recover the metal for recycling. This process is expensive, liability-prone, time-consuming, and has a high carbon footprint due to the trucks used to transport the waste offsite for recycling.
Membrion, a Seattle startup backed by Lam Capital, has a novel approach that enables fabs to treat the waste at the fab and discharge it into a standard water drain for reclamation. This results in cost savings and limits the environmental impact.
Why it matters: The approach recovers up to 90% of clean water from waste streams, reduces hazardous waste liability, waste-hauling and related costs, and carbon emissions, and has the potential to save fabs hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars annually.
- “Membrion’s solution addresses an expensive and critical environmental challenge in semiconductor manufacturing,” says John Ostrowski, VP of Engineering and deputy GM of the WETS group at Lam. “It’s a new value proposition for the industry — one that helps fabs operate more efficiently while reducing their environmental footprint.”
How it works: Membrion uses electro-ceramic desalination technology engineered to withstand the extreme chemical conditions in semiconductor fabrication. The ceramic membranes extract copper and other metals from wastewater to within permitted discharge levels.
- The result is that most of the stream can be safely re-used or discharged into municipal wastewater streams. The metals are either recycled directly on-site or concentrated into a small volume to be recycled off-site.
- For Lam, creating the next generation of chips means innovating with new metals and additives, which creates new complex waste streams. Membrion’s approach provides an ability to solve facility-level challenges with today’s waste streams while having the adaptability to address future innovations.
How it began: Lam first connected with Membrion during Lam Capital’s 2022 Venture Competition, in which Membrion was crowned runner-up by a panel of industry venture capital judges in the innovation competition. What began as a promising idea has since evolved into a collaboration that combines Lam’s industry expertise with Membrion’s sustainable water treatment technology.
- Together, Lam and Membrion are conducting joint pilots, refining system integration, and preparing for broader customer engagement. We’ve been leveraging Membrion’s process at one of our facilities for the last 18 months.
The bottom line: By combining Lam’s aspiration for sustainable manufacturing with Membrion’s innovative approach to water treatment, we’re helping semiconductor fabs prove that environmental responsibility and business success can go hand in hand.