SOI and other advanced substrate based technologies will be significant beneficiaries of the European Commission’s “New European Industrial Strategy for Electronics”, targeting the mobilization of €100 billion in new private investments.

SOI and other advanced substrate based technologies will be significant beneficiaries of the European Commission’s “New European Industrial Strategy for Electronics”, targeting the mobilization of €100 billion in new private investments. In addition to the recently announced €360M FD-SOI Places2Be project (which stands for Pilot Lines for Advanced CMOS Enhanced by SOI in 2x nodes, Built in Europe), other projects announced by the ENIAC JU* include:

• E450EDL (“European 450mm Equipment Demo Line”, €205.7M, 43 members) – this project is to continue the engagement of the European semiconductor equipment and materials industry in the 450mm wafer size transition.
• AGATE (“Development of Advanced GaN substrates & Technologies”, €59.6M, 10 members, lead by Soitec) The project plans to set-up three pilot lines for GaN-based advanced substrates and devices to help the introduction and market acceptance of these More-Than-Moore technologies.

• Lab4MEMS (“LAB FAB for smart sensors and actuators MEMS”, €28.5M, 21 members, lead by ST) aims to establish a European Pilot Line targeting the market drivers in consumer and healthcare application such as body area sensors and remote monitoring.

As European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes said, “I want to double our chip production to around 20% of global production. […] It’s a realistic goal if we channel our investments properly.”

*The ENIAC Joint Undertaking (JU) is a public-private partnership focusing on nanoelectronics that brings together ENIAC Member/Associated States, the European Commission, and AENEAS (an association representing European R&D actors in this field). The document providing details on the pilot line projects is available here.