He will be in Catalonia and will support the Alba syrrtron

Little by little, projects of some ambition are flourishing that seek to put Spain on the map of the semiconductor industry. One of them is The Godic planan initiative led by the Asturian company Nanoker, the Burgos Hiperbaric and the Basque Electronic Fagor with the purpose of developing advanced silicon carbide chips. In addition, Spain also actively participates in the tuning of The new European pilot line which seeks to lead the integration and encapsulation of components and electronic systems.

The Spanish institution that is involved in this plan is the CSIC Barcelona Microelectronics Institute (IMB-CNM-CSIC), a center that has a lot of experience in both microelectronics and in advanced techniques for manufacturing integrated circuits. Precisely this is one of the institutions that participate in the project that stars this article: Innofab. Although the governments of Spain and the Generalitat approved it at the end of 2023 is now when it seems to be taking shape.

An integrated avant -garde circuit factory for 2028

INNOFAB will be a state -of -the -art semiconductor factory that will be housed in the Catalan town of Cerdanyola del Vallès, which is located just 6 km from the center of Barcelona. This installation will cost approximately 392 million euros and will be financed with funds from the Plan Plan Generation of the European Union, as well as with capital contributed by the governments of Spain and the Generalitat. Construction works will begin soon with the purpose of the plant starting chips in 2028.

A priori everything looks good, but there are two things that are worth not overlooking. The first is that 392 million euros seem scarce if we keep in mind that a manufacturing plant of integrated avant -garde circuits such as, for example, those that are those that TSMC is building in Arizona (USA) or the one Intel plans to point on Magdeburg (Germany), it costs some 30,000 million euros. On the other hand, its installation in Cerdanyola del Vallès is not casual.

The INNOFAB project is led by the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and will reside very close to the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Alba synchrotron. Its purpose is to develop, as I have mentioned a few lines above, next -generation semiconductors, but it will not be conventional chips; They will be integrated circuits in which advanced materials, such as graphene, will be used to unmark silicon semiconductors whose production It is controlled by Asia and the USA.

The role of the Alba synestron will be crucial in this installation. A syncrotron is a circular electron accelerator that is used to analyze the properties of matter at the atomic level, such as various types of materials, or even proteins. Alba resides inside the building that you can see in the cover image of this article. When the INNOFAB factory is ready, this particle accelerator will allow to analyze at an atomic scale Candidate materials to be used in the production of semiconductors. And the properties of integrated avant -garde circuits.

An important note is that Innofab will not produce chips in large quantities; Its role will be to develop advanced technologies that will then be commercially exploited in other plants. This role in a way justifies that its cost is somewhat less than 400 million euros. In any case, it is a very interesting project that is worth following the track very closely.

Image | ABMARTINEZBONILLO

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