Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) is an international
research & development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...
organization, active in the fields of
nanoelectronics
Nanoelectronics refers to the use of nanotechnology in electronic components. The term covers a diverse set of devices and materials, with the common characteristic that they are so small that inter-atomic interactions and quantum mechanical pr ...
and
digital technologies
Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. This is in contrast to analog electronics and analog signals.
Digital electronic circuits are usually ...
, with headquarters in
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
. Luc Van den hove has served as President and CEO since 2009.
In September 2016, imec merged with the
Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
digital research center,
iMinds
iMinds (formerly IBBT) was a Flemish non-profit organization, founded by the Flemish Government. It was founded as a research institute, with a focus on information & communication technology ( ICT) in general, and applications of broadband techno ...
.
Overview
Imec employs around 4,000 researchers from more than 90 countries; it has numerous facilities dedicated to research and development around the world, including 12,000 square meters of
cleanroom
A cleanroom or clean room is an engineered space, which maintains a very low concentration of airborne particulates. It is well isolated, well-controlled from contamination, and actively cleansed. Such rooms are commonly needed for scientif ...
capacity for
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
processing. The imec headquarters are located in
Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic ...
.
History
In 1982, the
Flemish Government
The Flemish Government ( nl, Vlaamse regering ) is the executive branch of the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region of Belgium. It consists of a government cabinet, headed by the Minister-President and accountable to the Flemish Parliament, a ...
set up a program to strengthen the
microelectronics
Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-sc ...
industry in
Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...
. This program included setting up a laboratory for advanced research in microelectronics (imec), a semiconductor foundry (former Alcatel Microelectronics, now
STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...
and
AMI Semiconductor
onsemi (stylized in lowercase; legally ON Semiconductor Corporation; formerly ON Semiconductor until August 5, 2021) is an American semiconductor supplier company, based in Phoenix, Arizona and ranked #483 on the 2022 ''Fortune'' 500 based on it ...
,) and a training program for
VLSI
Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) c ...
design engineers. The latter is now fully integrated in the imec activities.
Imec was founded in 1984 as a non-profit organization led by
Prof. Roger Baron Van Overstraeten. The name imec is an acronym of the original full name: Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum VZW. It is supervised by a Board of Directors, which includes delegates from industry, Flemish universities and the
Flemish Government
The Flemish Government ( nl, Vlaamse regering ) is the executive branch of the Flemish Community and the Flemish Region of Belgium. It consists of a government cabinet, headed by the Minister-President and accountable to the Flemish Parliament, a ...
. Since 1984, imec has been led by
Roger Van Overstraeten, Gilbert Declerck (as of June 1999), and
Luc Van den Hove
Luc Van den hove (1 March 1960, Turnhout) is President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IMEC, Europe's largest independent research center in the field of nanoelectronics and digital technologies.
Van den hove is regarded as an expert on tech ...
(as of July 2009).
In February 2016, it was announced that imec would be merging with the Flemish digital research center,
iMinds
iMinds (formerly IBBT) was a Flemish non-profit organization, founded by the Flemish Government. It was founded as a research institute, with a focus on information & communication technology ( ICT) in general, and applications of broadband techno ...
. The merge was finalized on September 21, 2016.
Advanced Semiconductor Scaling
Imec is well-known for its expertise in shrinking circuitry to boost computing and memory power and for the applicability of nanotechnology in novel industries. In 2015,
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
stated that imec has helped pioneer techniques to produce some of the world’s smallest and most sophisticated chips and the centre is considered to be a world-leader in nanoelectronics research.
In December 2022, imec signed a cooperation agreement with new Japanese venture
Rapidus
Rapidus Corporation is a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Rapidus was established in August 2022 with the support of eight major Japanese companies: Denso, Kioxia, MUFG Bank, NEC, NTT, SoftBank, Sony, and ...
for production of
2 nm process semiconductor chips.
Energy
Imec performs research in smart energy, ranging from developing ways to actively and cost-effectively plan, deploy and manage smart grid networks up to improving the efficiency, production and storage cost of (solar) energy. Considerable advances have been made in solar cell and solid state battery technologies.
Together with KU Leuven, VITO, and
UHasselt, imec set up a separate R&D hub to perform research into sustainable energy and intelligent energy systems. The project is named EnergyVille and employs 400 researchers whose work centers around six interdisciplinary domains: photovoltaics, electrical and thermal storage, power control and conversion, electrical and thermal networks, buildings and districts, strategies and markets.
Artificial Intelligence
Imec performs advanced research on artificial intelligence and was awarded 750.000 USD twice in 2019 by
DARPA
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Adv ...
in a machine-learning competition .
In a 2017 report,
The Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikk ...
named imec’s self-learning neuromorphic chip one of the fifty ideas that will change the world and was described by the newspaper as having the potential to revolutionize computing.
Smart Cities
In 2017, the Flemish government commissioned imec to support the 13 leading Flemish cities and the Flemish community in Brussels in their transition to becoming smart cities. imec was also commissioned by the Flemish government and the City of Antwerp to create Europe’s largest lab for Internet of Things applications.
Image Sensors and Vision Systems
In 2019, the state of Florida declared a partnership with imec to develop hyperspectral technology that is able to better detect invasive Burmese and rock pythons, which have been permanently damaging the
Everglades
The Everglades is a natural region of tropical climate, tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orland ...
’ eco-systems.
Smart Health
Neuropixels Technology
The performance of the
Neuropixels
Neuropixels probes are electrodes developed in 2017 to record the activity of hundreds of neurons in the brain. The probes are based on CMOS technology and have 1,000 recording sites arranged in two rows on a thin, 1-cm long shank.
The probes ar ...
probes and their potential for transformational neuroscience experiments was described in a November 9, 2017 paper published in Nature. In 2019, The New York Times reported that imec's Neuropixels technology is widely recognized as the most advanced method of gathering data from brain cells.
Brain-On-Chip Research
In 2018, imec announced the creation of a research venture together with
KU Leuven
KU Leuven (or Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. It conducts teaching, research, and services in computer science, engineering, natural sciences, theology, humanities, medicine, l ...
,
UZ Leuven
Universitair Ziekenhuis Leuven or University Hospitals Leuven, often shortened to UZ Leuven, is an academic hospital in Leuven, Belgium, associated with the university KU Leuven. It consists of three campuses as of 2022; Gasthuisberg, Pellenberg a ...
and
VIB, called Mission Lucidity. The venture’s aim is to decode dementia.
imec is creating human-specific living brain models, so called 'brains-on-chips’ which automate and miniaturize human stem cell manipulations, and developing technology to generate programmable, instrumented 3D brain models with single-cell precision. The project was supported by a Collaborative Science Award of one million dollars by the
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetime ...
.
Point of care blood test devices (Johns Hopkins University & miDiagnostics)
Peter Peumans, in charge of imec’s life science technologies program, helped found miDiagnostics and was appointed CTO. In 2019,
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
awarded funding to miDiagnostics to test a technology for monitoring astronauts’ health status under zero gravity conditions, with the aim of advancing space health diagnostics.
Wearables
Imec develops wearable devices. Its technologies have gained several approvals by regulatory agencies such as the FDA and PMDA and have made contributions to studies published in Nature.
Through its spinoff Bloomlife, imec develops pregnancy monitoring technology that tracks fetal health and fetal mobility , with the aim of giving pregnant women and their doctors better access to key details about fetal development.
Other applications include ingestible gut sensors designed to capture mechanical, electrical, and chemical changes that occur during digestion, flagging abnormalities and problems while also delivering personalized nutrition advice.
References
External links
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Organizations established in 1984
International research institutes
Research institutes in Belgium
University spin-offs
Information technology organisations based in Belgium
Companies based in Leuven