Siltronic, the silicon wafer manufacturer, and Qimonda, the DRAM manufacturer that is 77 per cent owned by Infineon, has received a federal government grant of Euros 6.5m to assist funding of their joint venture in developing silicon wafers for 3-D transistors.
Siltronic specialises in ultra-pure silicon wafers. Together with Qimonda, it will explore the basis for next-generation integrated electronic components, particularly for DRAM applications.
The grant comes from the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF).
The rationale is that current, 2-D transistors will be replaced by 3-D transistors allowing lower power consumption and higher capacity of new devices in increasingly smaller structure sizes.
The objective of the research is to optimise the properties of wafers to the requirements of future three dimensional transistors.
It is claimed that the joint venture will strengthen the competence of Saxony's microelectronics locations in Dresden and Freiberg.
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