Arizona State University-affiliated research programs and laboratories will receive $1.2 billion in new funding for semiconductor packaging, winning two of four new national awards announced by the U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday.
The biggest prize, worth $1.1 billion, will go to the Natcast Advanced Packaging Facility to be built in the ASU Research Park in southeast Tempe. This laboratory will be part of an effort to bridge the gap between research and commercial production and will involve testing new materials and devices used in specific packaging segments.
Natcast is a nonprofit entity tied to the Commerce Department and will own the new facility, which was announced on Jan. 6 but without a definitive funding amount. The laboratory is expected to draw researchers from around the nation, from startups to large manufacturers.
Packaging is the process of protecting semiconductors and connecting them to the myriad of electronic devices they power, in intricate ways that ensure performance and enhance speed while minimizing power use — all on an increasingly diminutive scale.
“Bolstering our advanced packaging capabilities is key to America remaining a global leader in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, in a prepared statement. These and other investments under the CHIPS and Science Act “will strengthen our end-to-end semiconductor ecosystem and help close the gap between invention and commercialization to ensure the U.S. is a global leader in semiconductor innovation and manufacturing.”
The Commerce Department also finalized awards of $100 million each to projects in two other states.
One will go to Absolics Inc. in Covington, Georgia, to support the company’s research in glass-core packaging, which focuses on reducing power consumption and the complexity of semiconductor systems used in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and data centers.
That’s in addition to $100 million for Applied Materials in Santa Clara, California, for packaging used in energy-efficient AI and high-performance computing. Applied Materials also will conduct research at the Natcast facility at ASU.
Arizona already had received a disproportionately high amount of awards under the CHIPS Act, including $6.6 billion for the new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing complex in north Phoenix, about $3.9 billion for Intel’s campus in Chandler and around $400 million going to Amkor Technology, a leading packaging provider, for a new plant in Peoria.
Reach the writer at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ASU-related projects nab $1.2 billion for semiconductor research