None of The main semiconductor manufacturers The planet is European. TSMC, the company that leads this industry, is from Taiwan. Samsung and Sk Hynix are South Korean. Intel and Micron Technology are Americans. AND SMIC is China. This panorama invites us to accept that Europe has lost the train of the production of integrated circuits, but, in reality, it is not so. At least not at all.
And it is that the old continent has ASMLthe Dutch company that leads the design and manufacture of photolithography equipment that is necessary to produce avant -garde semiconductors. And it also has IMEC, an integrated circuit research center founded in 1984 and housed in Leuven (Belgium). It is the most experienced laboratory in the tuning of new integration technologies that we have in Europe.
IMEC and ASML work side by side to go beyond the 2 nm
Europe does not have the expertise of the US, China, Japan or South Korea when it comes to the industry that develops in its laboratories. In what remains a global power is in border investigation. If we look beyond the semiconductors and look, for example, in Quantum computerswe will verify that the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics housed in Garching (Germany) and the Quantum Computing Center of Delft (Netherlands) are two leading institutions in the research in quantum computing.
Europe seeks to develop the necessary integration technologies to produce semiconductors beyond the 2 Nm barrier
IMEC has that same prestige, but in the field of innovation in integrated circuits. This is the reason why in May 2024 The European Union decided deliver a subsidy 2.5 billion euros To put a pilot line that will allow the manufacture of avant -garde semiconductors. This subsidy will be part of the ‘Chips Act’ program and has a very specific purpose: to develop integration technologies that are necessary to produce semiconductors Beyond the 2 Nm barrier.
This is, in short, the European plan. And it is that IMEC intends to put its technology in the hands of European companies that are dedicated to automotive, telecommunications or the manufacture of medical devices, among other sectors. Diversification can play in your favor because it will contribute to developing the European technological ecosystem on a large scale. However, this research center is not addressing this project alone; He is working side by side with ASML. In fact, this company of the Netherlands has a crucial role in this plan.
And he has it because he will deliver to IMEC the photolithography teams that his researchers need to bring to fruition the production of integrated circuits of less than 2 nm. ASML will install in this laboratory even your machine extreme ultraviolet (UVE) and haute openingwhich is the most advanced semiconductor production team it currently has. In fact, the technology of this machine is the only one that is capable of take us beyond the 2 nm. One more note to conclude: the collaboration of IMEC and ASML also seeks to develop integration technologies for DRAM chips, the Fotonic silicon and advanced packaging techniques of integrated circuits.
Image | IMEC
More information | IMEC
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