Tyndall’s Photonics Packaging & Systems Integration Group partners with MIT
to develop sustainable semiconductor chips production processes and workforce education programmes
Researchers at Tyndall National Institute (UCC) led by Prof. Peter O’Brien have been awarded funding by the National Science Foundation in the US to diversify and strengthen the supply chain for manufacturing and packaging of semiconductor devices. The FUTUR-IC project is led by researchers at MIT and includes Tyndall, SEMI (an organization to advance the global semiconductor supply chain), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI), and the Rochester Institute of Technology.
His research team at Tyndall will partner in the FUTUR-IC project which is funded by the National Science Foundation.
The market for microelectronics in the next decade is predicted to be on the order of a trillion dollars, but most of the manufacturing for the industry occurs only in limited geographical pockets around the world.
“The current microchip manufacturing supply chain, which includes production, distribution, and use, is neither scalable nor sustainable and cannot continue. We must innovate our way out of this future crisis,” say Anu Agrawal, Principal Research Scientist Materials Research Laboratory, MIT.
FUTUR-IC is a reference to the future of integrated circuits, or chips, through a global alliance for sustainable microchip manufacturing. FUTUR-IC brings together stakeholders from industry, academia, and government to co-optimize Technology, Ecology, and Workforce across three dimensions. Tyndall researchers will focus their efforts on Technology and Workforce vectors, bringing their unique expertise in developing advanced packaging technologies and educating the future workforce.
“We have established a deep and impactful partnership with our collaborators at MIT over the past years. FUTUR-IC is a new strand in that partnership, enabling us to deliver meaningful global impacts and strengthen research collaboration between Europe and the US,” says Prof. O’Brien.
The MIT-led team is one of six that received awards addressing sustainable materials for global challenges through phase two of the NSF Convergence Accelerator program. Launched in 2019, the program targets solutions to especially compelling challenges at an accelerated pace by incorporating a multidisciplinary research approach.
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