The Clean Room of the National Microelectronics Centre is expanding its facilities with co-financing from ERDF funds

The Micro and Nanofabrication Clean Room of the National Microelectronics Centre (CNM) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is a part of the Singular Scientific and Technological Infrastructure (ICTS) MICRONANOFABS, included in the current ICTS Map, approved by the Council of Scientific, Technological and Innovation Policy on the 6th November 2018. This ICTS is constituted in order to coordinate and bring together the existing resources of a series of geographically distributed infrastructures of diverse public ownership, which form a unique and strategic set of capabilities in Spain in the field of microelectronics, nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, photonics and their applications, offering competitive open access mechanisms in a coordinated manner in order to increase critical mass, improve national competitiveness, and avoid duplications and redundancies.

This Clean Room was created in 1985 as a fundamental part of the CNM research centre. From a technological point of view, it has been evolving and incorporating new families of technologies with the need to keep existing equipment and infrastructures fully operational, as well as to improve them to expand manufacturing capacity and adapt to new research and development needs of the industry. All this has given it a very wide range of applications, being the main facility in our country where it is possible to manufacture complete integrated circuits and devices in silicon and silicon carbide semiconductor technologies, as well as sensors, micro-nanoelectromechanical devices and electronic systems capable of exploiting the combined capabilities of micro and nanotechnologies.

In order to modernise, consolidate, expand and evolve the infrastructures for micro and nanotechnologies of the Clean Room of the IMB-CNM-CSIC, two agreements were signed between the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the CSIC in which the terms of the application of European funds for these actions are established. Altogether, the total budget is 14.7 million euros, 50% of which are financed with funds from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) corresponding to the Pluriregional Operational Program of Spain 2014-2020, assigned to the General Secretariat Research Department of the Ministry of Science and Innovation aimed at financing projects and actions related to infrastructures included in the current ICTS Map. The remaining 50% is contributed by the CSIC.

These operations involve providing the most complete technology in this field, allowing to operate with new (bio)compatible materials and new types of substrates and of different sizes, advantages that are of great importance for applications of the devices in fields as diverse as Biotechnology, security, environment, food, energy and mobility, communications and consumer electronics.

News published by the Office of the Ministry of Science and Innovation for the Singular Scientific and Technological Infrastructure (ICTS): La Sala Blanca del Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica está ampliando sus equipamientos con cofinanciación de fondos FEDER.