Toxic chemicals used in product design and manufacturing are grave concerns due to their toxic impact on human health. Implementing sustainable material selection strategies on toxic chemicals can substantially improve the sustainability of products in both design and manufacturing processes. In this paper, a schematic method is presented for characterizing and benchmarking the human health impact of toxic chemicals, as a visual aid to facilitate decision-making in the material selection process for sustainable design and manufacturing. In this schematic method, the human health impact of a toxic chemical is characterized by two critical parameters: daily exposure risk R and environmental persistence T. The human health impact of a toxic chemical is represented by its position in the R−T two-dimensional plot, which enables the screening and benchmarking of toxic chemicals to be easily made through comparing their relative positions in the characterization plot. A case study is performed on six toxic chemicals commonly used as solvents for cleaning and degreasing in product development and manufacturing.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a promising nanotechnology for wide applications in microelectronics manufacturing due to its ability to control layer growth at atomic scale. Sustainability of ALD technology needs to be quantitatively investigated in this early development stage to improve its economic and environmental performance. In this paper, we present an integrated sustainability analysis of ALD technology through material and energy flow analyses. The study is performed on the ALD of Al2O3 high- dielectric film through trimethylaluminum and water binary reactions. The precursor utilizations, methane emissions, and nanowaste generations from the ALD process are all quantitatively studied. Energy flow analysis demonstrates that the ALD process energy consumption is mainly determined by the ALD cycle time rather than the process temperature. Scale-up performance of the ALD technology is also studied for both emission generations and energy consumptions. Strategies and methods for improving the sustainability performance of the ALD technology are suggested based on the analysis.