Revealing the Semiconductor Industry’s Next Leap: UltraFacility 2025’s Breakthrough Trends

If you want to know where the semiconductor industry is going, don’t rely on press releases – look at the technical papers.

The accepted abstracts for UltraFacility 2025 are more than just technical updates. They show a roadmap for unignorable opportunities – the kind that reshape business strategies and redefine industry collaboration.

In 2025, with a record 117 abstracts submitted by the deadline – up from 13 in 2022 – we’re delivering our highest-quality agenda yet, choosing only the cream of the crop. That 800% percentage increase in submitted abstracts over three years shows an industry trend in itself: semiconductor facilities thrive on collaboration and solution-sharing.

Here are seven more key trends emerging from the UltraFacility 2025 agenda, and why they show the direction in which the semiconductor industry is heading.

1. Two industries with a shared future: data centers and the semiconductor industry prepare to collaborate

One of the UltraFacility co-moderating team commented in the review period that “leveraging semiconductor fab design and construction best practices within the hyperscale data center space is a non-trivial topic with the potential to rapidly accelerate growth while reducing data center environmental impact.”

Until now, this conference had received only one data center abstract, but in 2025 we received over 10. The two industries are poised to take advantage of deep technical exchange. The semiconductor industry’s growth depends on data center buildout, and conversely data centers must adopt the precision of the semiconductor industry.

From offsite manufacturing to water reclaim systems, from commissioning to liquid cooling, companies such as Schneider Electric, Carollo Engineers, HDR and Turner are ready to share exchange practices to fuel the AI revolution.

2. Artificial Intelligence shifts from hype to proven impact

The AI revolution isn’t just power by the semiconductor industry – it’s being woven into the fabric of facilities themselves. For three years our Call for Abstracts invited AI applications for yield enhancement without luck, but this year marks innovation coming into practice. This year, Intel’s “AI-Powered Predictive Maintenance for Lithography Ultrapure Water Systems”reflects the industry’s new strategic priority straight from the end-user. The presented case study offers a blueprint for next-generation reliability – this particular example forecasts resin exhaustion, but its principles will no doubt be applied across facilities.

AI is not just making waves in UPW. HVAC systems are experiencing the tide with presentations like “Smarter Cooling for Smarter Chips” from Infinite Cooling and “Chiller Plant Optimization for Semiconductor Manufacturing” from Rockwell Automation.In water management, Veolia will present AI for reverse osmosis systems. The digital transformation is hitting every space.

3. Ultrapure water enters a new era

UltraFacility’s roots are in ultrapure water (UPW). Back in 2022, a semiconductor facilities engineer told us that the UPW world has not seen real innovation in years. The 2025 presentations prove that the game has changed, showing not just incremental improvements in contamination control, but step change developments which transform the industry.

Take the example: “Presenting a new PFAS-free Hot Ultrapure Water Piping System” from Georg Fischer Piping Systems. Since the announcement of incoming PFAS regulations 5 years ago, the industry has been anticipating the presentation of this research. 4 years of screening 20 polymers for a PVDF alternative has yielded results – a non-fluorinated design which shows much potential, not only for the regulatory issue, but for dramatically improving yield too.

With other abstracts spotlighting part-per-quadrillion levels of detection of particles in ultrapure water, as well as particle precursors, the UPW presentations in 2025 are clear marker of innovation.

4. PFAS is being tackled from all angles – from academia to industry, from water to air

PFAS emerged as the single most popular topic this year, with 22 of 117 submissions on the challenge. It’s not that the market is overly crowded – it’s because solutions are in high demand, and industry and academia are coming together to drive different strategies for tech commercialization.

Our poster session will showcase the academic research pipeline, with research from Rice University, University of Washington, University of North Texas, Oregon University – all primed to advance PFAS solutions from the lab bench to full-scale deployment.

For the first time, the technical agenda breaks down the silos across disciplines by showing developments in measuring PFAS in air emissions. Eurofins and Barr Engineering will present real-world sampling best practices, and Spectrum Environmental Solutions introducing new FTIR techniques for volatile PFAS detection. Extremely valuable in themselves, these presentations can no doubt also inform the metrology landscape for PFAS in water applications, with FTIR technology broadening the spectrum of PFAS visible, and enhancing detection limits.

5. Growth management goes nuclear

With demand skyrocketing, facility growth is hitting utility limits. One bold solution appears in Sargent & Lundy’s “Deployment of Nuclear Energy to Support Growing Semiconductor Utility Demands” – exploring how small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors could provide power for semiconductor fabs and enhanced reliability to avoid critical downtime. Those in the water sector will want to see this presentation too, as the cogeneration potential extends beyond electricity to processes such as desalination and heating.

The move to nuclear has been tentative for years, but now there is readiness for deployment. This move shows more than just a change in how fabs are powered – it is about rethinking infrastructure for resilience, sustainability, and scale.

6. The future will be built faster – and smarter

Offsite and prefabricated construction is “an approach our industry needs to more aggressively adopt,” as one of our co-moderators put it. Innovative delivery methods are becoming a key differentiator for an end-user when choosing a supplier – and these front-running innovators are proving that speed can actually come with enhanced quality.

IDE Technologies’ “A Hybrid Off-Site Manufacturing (OSM) Methodology: De-Risking and Accelerating Complex Industrial Projects” presents quantitative evidence from multiple industries, including semiconductor, showing how modular approaches can reduce schedules and improve quality control simultaneously.

Semi-precast fabrication is also gaining ground, particularly for cleanrooms, where precision is paramount. In “Case Study on the Application of Semi-Precast (SPC) Construction in Semiconductor Cleanroom Facilities” TSMC and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University detail how SPC impacts the installation and coordination of critical facility systems such as UPW, HVAC, and electrical power.

7. The semiconductor industry will continue to rethink water management

In most industries, advanced water treatment is an aspiration. In semiconductor manufacturing, it’s the baseline. That constant push to operate at the edge of what is possible drives ongoing re-examination of long-held assumptions.

This mindset is reflected by the end-users delivering presentations this year. “Expect the Unexpected: Avoiding Late-Stage Surprises in Water Projects through System-Level Data Analysis” from NXP Semiconductor shows that experience, and great engineering intuition is not sufficient – this data-driven presentation will highlight real lessons learned which avoided some missteps.

The supply chain also thrives at the cutting edge of technology development within the semiconductor industry. Xylem’s “Optimization of Membrane Contactors for Ammonia Removal & Recovery from Semiconductor Wastewater” demonstrates a complete rethink of an outdated ammonia removal process. The result is major energy savings and a performance leap that challenges the assumptions baked into earlier implementations. Finally, ROTEC will present on modernizing the HERO process, which optimizes a legacy RO method which has been used across industries for decades.

With an agenda set to redefine the facility playbook, you don’t want to miss the UltraFacility Conference 3-5 December 2025, in Austin, Texas.