Belgian research group to help firms planning Indian semiconductor units

IMEC helps global chip manufacturers in the process of fitting transistors on a silicon chip.

A Belgian nanoelectronics researcher has agreed to “provide a complete support for India’s semiconductor journey”, said an official of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Thursday.

Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre, or IMEC, helps global chip manufacturers in semiconductor functional scaling: the process of fitting transistors on a silicon chip.

The MeitY official said IMEC will give technical aid to companies setting up semiconductor units in India. “The firm is also willing to support the development of talent and research abilities in the country,” he said.

A joint venture of Vedanta and Foxconn, IGSS Ventures, Israel's ISMC, and Rajesh Export’s subsidiary Elest are among companies that have proposed setting up semiconductor units in India. The source said the ministry will complete the ongoing evaluation of applications for building chip factories by December 2022.

Global semiconductor producers are developing technology to reduce the size of transistors. IMEC aims to reduce the transistor size to less than 1nm. However, the official said the demand for big and mid-sized process nodes will remain robust in the future. “There will be a huge market for bigger process nodes and a significant market for mid-sized nodes,” he said. 

The MeitY official said more than 65 per cent of semiconductors are used in electric vehicles, power, and telecom equipment. These industries demand big and mid-sized nodes which are part of chips. Thus, the market is going to focus more on chips with nodes larger than 20-25 nanometres.