The €4.7m European Union ASCENT programme, led by Tyndall National Institute, UCC, has reached the milestone of delivering 100 nanoelectronics projects to researchers from 30 countries over the last four years.
ASCENT has built a community of over 400 researchers from the nanoelectronics modelling and characterisation research community and has provided free access to the unique research infrastructure and expertise in three of Europe’s premier research centres.
Julie Donnelly, Tyndall programme manager, said: “The three partners each provided researchers with a chance to access advanced device data, test chips, fabrication facilities and characterisation equipment at Tyndall, imec and CEA-Leti.
“This enabled the research community to explore exciting new developments in industry. We undertook a promotion campaign including workshops and a dedicated accelerator programme for PhD students. The feedback from the users was always very positive.”
To date, the 100 ASCENT projects have included customised nanofabrication, a range of nano-visualisation and electrical/physical characterisation projects as well as the provision of test wafers, from both imec and CEA-Leti, containing the very latest advanced nano-device technologies.
Tyndall’s partners on the projects have included institutes like CEA-Leti in France and imec in Belgium.
The partners’ respective facilities are truly world-class, representing over €2 billion of combined research infrastructure with unique credentials in advanced semiconductor processing, nanofabrication, heterogeneous and 3D integration, electrical characterisation and atomistic and TCAD modelling.
