Few materials can claim to be the most influential in the history of civilization, but copper may just take the title.
Recognized as humanity’s ‘first metal’, it has been used for more than 10,000 years. In the Bronze Age, around 3,000 BC, humans learned to smelt copper and tin to create bronze – a superior material that enabled rapid advances in civilization. The Romans and Egyptians used copper for plumbing, while its antimicrobial properties supported early public health infrastructure. Copper also formed the invaluable ‘thread’ that delivered the first electricity and telecommunication. Today, copper’s strategic value is higher than ever, critical across all electrical devices and applications, renewable energy, power grids, electric mobility, infrastructure, ICT, aerospace and defence. Copper’s contribution to the advance of humankind goes on.
From homes and cars to electronics and clean energy, copper is everywhere and essential.
For such a seemingly ‘ordinary’ and familiar metal, copper has an extraordinary role in the high-tech economy.
The magic in the microchip
This includes its use as an essential component in semiconductors – the micro ‘engines’ of our digital world. Umicore is closely involved in this work through its Metal Deposition Solutions business which provides materials and technologies to build microchips.
One key process is electroplating, where an electric current is used to deposit extremely thin layers of copper onto a chip, building microscopic connections between its components.
Klaus Leyendecker, Division Manager Semiconductor Applications, explains the process and copper’s pivotal role in this super high-tech industry: “Copper is essential in semiconductor manufacturing. With copper electroplating, the layers are repeated and repeated, forming the connections in these tiny three-dimensional structures.” It is this connective tissue of copper layers – the ‘wiring’ inside a chip – that enables ever-smaller, faster and more efficient microchips. As Klaus says: “No mobile phone, computer or television could function without copper.”
Alongside electroplating, thin film deposition provides another way to create ultra-thin and conductive layers inside microchips. Here Umicore supplies very high purity copper materials, including so-called sputtering targets, that chip makers use to build these layers through physical vapour deposition (PVD). Sputtering is a process where atoms are knocked off a solid material and deposited onto a surface to create a very thin layer.
Christian Frei, Managing Director of Thin Film Products at Umicore, says the purity of the copper is essential for this process: “In this field of advanced electronics, you need 99.995% purity of copper or higher, known as 4N or 5N purity, and a highly specific grain size on the sputtering target.”
Coming full circle
While semiconductor manufacturing demands ultra-high-purity copper, the use of copper in all areas of electronics also creates an end-of-life stream where copper can be recovered and reintroduced into the economy. That is where Umicore’s Precious Metals Refining site in Hoboken, Belgium, comes in: it processes complex material streams – including electronic-waste – to recover copper that can then be purified in the refining process.
As David Van Dijck, notes: “The copper used in chips and electronic devices comes full circle – ending its journey back at our recycling and refining facility. Unfortunately, many people hold on to old devices, often for years, instead of bringing them in for recycling. That’s a lot of copper that doesn’t make it back into the value chain. Have you ever counted how many old mobile phones you have in a drawer?”
Copper and the growth of AI
Looking ahead, this most ancient of metals is also playing an important role in the AI era. Copper’s many qualities see it playing a role on multiple fronts. For example, vast amounts of copper are needed for energy-hungry data centers, not only in the electrical networks of the facilities themselves, but also in the supporting grid infrastructure to supply electricity. Copper also plays an important role in the high-powered AI chips that are the ‘brains’ of a data center. These super-chips operate at significantly higher temperatures than conventional processing units. With one of the highest thermal conductivities of any metal, copper enables advanced liquid cooling that can transfer heat away from processors far more effectively than conventional air-cooling.
These AI chips generate a similar level of heat as a toaster. When it comes to metals to use in the most efficient liquid-cooling systems, copper is still the number one.
Another growing role for copper in AI lies in environmental catalysts. Alain Ristori, Senior Project Manager Stationary Catalysts at Umicore, says copper-based Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) catalysts remove harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from large diesel generators used as back-up power for data centers. “Copper is going to play a bigger role reducing the climate impact of data centers as the sector grows and there’s a greater need for back-up electricity supply,” he says.
As copper demand grows, prices are surging and the market is tightening. In the EU alone, demand is projected to increase by more than 50% by 2050. As David Van Dijck says: “Electrification is driving demand higher, while supply struggles to keep up. Opening a new mine can take 10 or 20 years.”
In this context, the growth of the circular economy for copper, and the contribution of Umicore’s copper recycling and refining expertise, will become increasingly valuable. “We live in a less globalized world,” says David, “so the more we can get out of recycling, the better.”
