Semiconductor Industry Picks New York, California Sites for Nano Centers

In the Dec. 19, 2005 issue of the SSTI Weekly Digest, an editor's note highlighted the mega-investments several states are making to establish themselves as significant players in key research areas. New York's commitment to nanotechnology research in the Albany region, already in the hundreds of millions of dollars with the 2002 recruitment of Sematech North, was one of the examples mentioned.

Also in the nanotechnology area, we could have included California's $100 million investment toward the $350 million initial cost to launch the California Nanosystems Institute at UCLA in 2001. The balance of the funding was secured through federal and industrial sources.

In addition to the direct economic benefits received by injecting so much public money into a specific field in a concentrated geographic region, states like New York and California are banking on their seed dollars attracting additional industrial and federal funding, as well as creating spillover effects through company expansions, relocations to the area and new company creation.

The Dec. 8 announcement by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) that it was establishing one of its two major nanoelectronics research institutes at the State University of New York-Albany, with the other based at UCLA, would suggest that both states' past investments are paying off.

Press materials from SIA do not mention the size of the awards, but past history within the sector would suggest the commitment will be sizable and sustaining. Collaborative research has been a defining characteristic of North America's semiconductor industry for more than two decades. For example, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, SIA's university-research arm, has funneled more than $500 million into competitive university research projects since its founding in 1982.

The new centers are:

• The Western Institute of Nanoelectronics (WIN) in California. Headquartered at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, WIN participants will come from three University of California campuses (Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Barbara) and Stanford University. WIN will focus on novel spintronics and plasmonic devices. In addition to its support from the SIA funding, the center also will receive additional direct support from Intel and the UC Discovery program.
• The Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX) in Albany, N.Y.  Headquartered at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering of the State University of New York-Albany (SUNY-Albany), it also will include the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Yale University. INDEX will focus on the development of nanomaterial systems; atomic-scale fabrication technologies; predictive modeling protocols for devices, subsystems and systems; power dissipation management designs; and realistic architectural integration schemes for realizing novel magnetic and molecular quantum devices. In addition to the state support, INDEX also will receive direct funding from IBM.

New York Gov. George Pataki has announced he will request $80 million from the state legislature to be used, in part, to construct a 250,000 square-foot research facility in Albany. There are no indications that California pledged any funding.

More information regarding SIA's Nanoelectronic Research Initiative is available at: http://www.src.org/nri/default.asp?bhjs=0