Soitec of Bernin, France, which makes engineered substrates including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and III-V epiwafers, and CEA (the French Atomic and Renewable Energy Commission) have renewed their long-standing partnership for the next five years. The new contract aims to support Soitec’s strategy for the electronics, solar energy and lighting markets, and will focus on engineered substrates and materials offering higher performances and energy savings at a competitive cost.
As the new partnership is putting in place what is decribed as a powerful R&D ecosystem, time from research to product should be reduced considerably. Due to the strengths of CEA-Leti of Grenoble, France (CEA’s Laboratory for Electronics & Information Technology) in electronic materials, multi-domain research and its pre-industrialization infrastructure, competitive R&D sample prototyping will be enabled through a common platform, reducing time to market and R&D costs for Soitec and its customers, it is reckoned.
The CEA-Leti and Soitec teams will focus their efforts on developing new materials generations to support Soitec roadmaps in three markets (electronics, solar energy and lighting). To do so, they will leverage the expertise of CEA-Leti and Soitec and use Smart Cut technology and extended tool box as key assets to support the next generations of mobile devices, solar cells and LEDs.
“In our industry, competitive pre-industrialization research, development of technology and product prototypes have become very important to make the difference,” says Soitec’s chief technology officer Dr Carlos Mazuré. “The CEA-Leti and Soitec partnership establishes a powerful alliance that is capable of answering the numerous challenges of today’s industrial requirements and building on our well-established material expertise,” he reckons.
“The agreement aims at accelerating exploratory research as well as technology innovation to prepare the products of tomorrow,” Mazuré continues. “It complements the Soitec strategy of entering new markets with high-efficiency concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology, high-intensity LEDs for lighting applications, and engineered substrates for electronic applications,” he adds.
“In recent years, Soitec has widely expanded its footprint and impact by addressing the electronics and energy challenges through its unique technologies which we developed together,” comments CEA-Leti director Laurent Malier. “Our partnership is the most efficient framework for securing research execution to support the ambitions of Soitec.”
