A team at Australia's Monash University has published its work on a new water filtration membrane that can successfully remove small PFAS molecules from water flow. PFAS, or polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a key piece in multiple facets of semiconductor manufacturing that have earned the name "forever chemicals" for their difficulty to clean up.
Monash's research team is ready to utilize some key partnerships to bring the filters to market at a high scale, keeping PFAS out of the groundwater at plants in all of the various industries that work with forever chemicals. The semiconductor industry, however, has long been opposed to legislation or other initiatives to restrict its use of PFAS in fabrication, forming lobbying groups and other coalitions to conserve the use of forever chemicals in chipmaking.
