In a consolidated effort to keep Europe at the forefront of semiconductor technology, the European Commission will seed-fund an integrated project called NANOCMOS to pioneer advances in materials, processes, device architectures, and interconnections that push the limits of semiconductor performance and density.
Participants in the project will be charged with demonstrating the feasibility of 45-nm CMOS logic technology in 2005 while simultaneously starting research activities for the next-generation 32- and 22-nm technology nodes. Today, these smaller nodes are considered to be at the limits of present technologies.
The results of the NANOCMOS project are expected to open the way to entirely new applications for the future information society. Partners in the project include Europe's three largest semiconductor companies, Infineon, Philips, and STMicroelectronics, as well as the two largest European technological research institutes, CEA Leti (France) and IMEC (Belgium).
Also involved are three research laboratories coordinated by the FhG (Germany); eight research laboratories coordinated by the CNRS (France); one research laboratory from the Technical University of Chemnitz (Germany); three companies—Ion Beam Services (France), ISILTEC (Germany), and Magwel (Belgium); and lastly, ACIES Europe (France), which will handle some management aspects of the project.
Additional partners may be added to the consortium in the future. For more information about the NANOCMOS project, go to http://fmnt.online.fr/NANOCMOS.pdf.