Abstract
The rapid growth of the integrated circuit (IC) industry has led to the generation of highly complex and challenging-to-treat wastewater streams. This work presents a sustainable paradigm for transforming metal-containing IC wastewater into efficient heterogeneous catalysts. As a proof of concept, Cu-rich IC wastewater is converted into a multifunctional Cu/SiO2 catalyst via a simple ammonia-evaporation process, achieving up to 99.9% Cu recovery. The catalyst exhibits outstanding activity in the upcycling of various real-world polyethylene terephthalate (PET) wastes to p-xylene (PX) with near-quantitative yield (>99.9%), surpassing commercial Cu/SiO2. The superior catalytic performance is attributed to the modulation of the catalyst structure by trace coexisting metals in the wastewater, which promote the formation of abundant Cu/CuOx interfacial sites, facilitating H2 dissociation and C–O bond activation. Furthermore, this strategy also enables the complete transformation of Cu species onto other supports to construct various Cu-based catalysts. Overall, this work establishes a new paradigm for valorizing IC wastewater, which can be extended to other metal-containing wastewaters (e.g., Ni, Co, Pt), in alignment with the principles of green chemistry and the circular economy.
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Relevant data supporting the key findings of this study are available within the article and the Supplementary Information file. All raw data generated during the current study are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data are provided in this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported financially by National Natural Science Foundation of China (22572083) (Y. J.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (491914380001 (Y. J. and X.C.), 491914380008 (Y.J. and X.C.)), Nanjing University International Collaboration Initiative (X.C.), Independent research project of State Key Laboratory of Water Pollution Control and Green Resource Recycling (Y.J.), and start-up funding for high-level talent at Nanjing University (491916002207) (Y.J.). We thank the BL11U beamlines (https://cstr.cn/31131.02.HLS.CSS) of the Catalysis and Surface Science Endstation in the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in Hefei (https://cstr.cn/31131.02.HLS) for providing beam time, technical support and assistance in data collection and analysis to support this work. We gratefully acknowledge Mr. Liande Que (Shenzhen Hexin Technology Co., Ltd.), Mr. Xinchun Zhu (Yihewei Engineering Project Management Co., Ltd.) and Prof. Yang Pan (Nanjing University) for providing the IC wastewater samples.
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Y.J. and X.C. conceived and supervised the project. Y.J. and Y.L. designed the experiments. Y.L., W.N., K.Z., H.R. and P.Z. conducted the experiments and analyzed the data. Y.L. wrote the paper. Y.J., X.C. and Y.L. revised the manuscript. All authors participated in discussions.
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Liu, Y., Ni, W., Zhou, K. et al. Integrating integrated circuit wastewater into the metal catalyst supply chain. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70743-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70743-2
