The United States Department of Energy (DOE) and NY Creates have partnered to better connect the microelectronics industry with research
NY Creates is a New York-based semiconductor research centre who have been funded by the DOE’s Office of Science to boost research and construction of US microchips.
The pilot programme aims to connect the microelectronics industry with world-class instruments and materials-science expertise via Brookhaven and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.
Turning lab advancements into commercial products
This programme aims to address some of the greatest challenges the microelectronics industry faces by allowing industrial partners to bypass research barriers and access state-of-the-art equipment.
In theory, this will speed up the deployment of innovation into the next generations of chips used in essential technologies, including Super Intelligence (SI).
Furthermore, the collaboration will identify high-priority research areas in microelectronics, plan and execute experiments, and accelerate data analysis to help the field advance by identifying the most pressing industrial challenges and developing new approaches for materials characterisation and semiconductor patterning.
Two major areas of interest are lithography capabilities, which enhance the process used to pattern microscale electronic circuitry, and metrology, which measures and characterises the properties of semiconductor materials found in chips.
The facilities at Berkeley Lab and Brookhaven Lab offer scientific instruments that can advance both of these missions with capabilities for high numerical aperture (NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) patterning and advanced materials characterisation at the Advanced Light Source and Molecular Foundry at Berkeley Lab, and synchrotron-based X-ray metrology, nanoscale imaging, spectroscopy, scattering, and materials characterisation capabilities at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) and Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven Lab.
“We can enhance US competitiveness”
DOE Associate Director of Science for Basic Energy Sciences, Bindu Nair, said: “This pilot program will explore avenues for bolstering US technological leadership in the semiconductor industry. By leveraging the unique capabilities and expertise at each facility, we can enhance US competitiveness in a field that is of paramount importance to the nation’s strategic and economic security.”
Dave Anderson, Creates president and CEO, said: “Collaboration among the DOE Laboratories and Creates, while leveraging direct connections to an ecosystem of leading industrial partners, our High NA EUV Lithography Center, and team of experts, will provide a unique domestic R&D environment to support this pilot program and the development of next-generation EUV lithography capabilities as well as a domestic production base for novel microelectronics devices. We are thrilled to announce this strategic partnership with the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and further build on our collective capabilities.”
Europe is also making its own investment into microchip technology as earlier this month, €525m was invested via the European Chip Design Platform, designed to stimulate investment, creation, and expansion of European chip design companies.
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