Imec, certified TSMC Value Chain Aggregator (VCA), and DELTA Microelectronics, a leading provider of ASIC services, have concluded a cooperation agreement to provide customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) with comprehensive TSMC-based turnkey and partial turnkey ASIC services.

Despite the severe economical downturn, 2009 was a satisfying year for imec. Imec’s total revenue amounted to 275 million euro, including 222 million euro coming from collaboration with the global industry. 44.7 million euro was granted to imec Belgium by the Flemish government, to guarantee imec’s long term research and investment in new research initiatives, and imec the Netherlands at Holst Centre received 8 million euro from the Dutch gov...

Dow Corning, a global leader in silicones, silicon-based technology and innovation, signed a three-year contract with imec to perform joint research on next generations of crystalline silicon solar cells. In the framework of imec’s industrial affiliation program (IIAP) on silicon solar cells, Dow Corning has joined several program activities.

Imec announces that it has started work, together with its project partners, on PRIMA, a project under the EU’s 7th framework program for ICT (FP7). The project’s goal is to improve the efficiency and cost of solar cells though the use of metallic nanostructures. Next to imec, the project coordinator, the partners involved in PRIMA are Imperial College (London, UK), Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), Photovoltech (Belgium), Quantasol...

Imec, Holst Centre and the lab of neuro- and psychophysiology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven today present the Mind Speller, a portable, easy-to-wear, intelligent textual and verbal communications prototype device enabling people with motoric disabilities (suffering from for example brain paralysis or speech or language disorders) to communicate.

Imec and Altos Design Automation, Inc. today announce that they have entered into an agreement to set up a library re-characterization service based on Altos ultra-fast characterization tools. With this collaboration, imec will extend its ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) prototyping and volume fabrication service with library re-characterization which is essential when designing in 65nm and 40nm nodes.

Supported by funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme, a consortium of eight leading institutions has launched a joint microelectronics research project aiming to develop innovative design methods and related EDA tools which remove the limitations in physical implementation effectiveness associated with technology scaling and advanced sub-wavelength lithography. The Synaptic consortium is composed of eight leading instituti...

At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference, imec and its research partners Renesas Technology Corp. and M4S present a complete transceiver with RF, baseband and data converter circuits in 40nm low-power CMOS. The fully reconfigurable transceiver is compatible with various wireless standards and applications, including the upcoming mobile broadband 3GPP-LTE standard.

At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference, imec and Holst Centre report an ultra-low power 8 bit analog to digital convertor (ADC) consuming only 30fJ energy per conversion step. This world-class figure of merit ADC is especially suited for upcoming low energy radios in the ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) radio bands such as low-energy Bluetooth or IEEE 802.15.6 for body-area networks.

At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC), Holst Centre, imec and TNO present a dual-gate-based organic RFID chip with record data rate and lowest reported operating voltage. For the first time, the advantages of dual gate transistors in circuit speed and robustness have thereby been exploited in a complex organic-electronic circuit.

At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC), Holst Centre, imec and TNO present a dual-gate-based organic RFID chip with record data rate and lowest reported operating voltage. For the first time, the advantages of dual gate transistors in circuit speed and robustness have thereby been exploited in a complex organic-electronic circuit.

At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference, imec and Holst Centre report a 2.4GHz/915MHz wake-up receiver which consumes only 51µW power. This record low power achievement opens the door to battery-less or energy-harvesting based radios for a wide range of applications including long-range RFID and wireless sensor nodes for logistics, smart buildings, healthcare etc.

At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference, imec and Holst Centre report an analog-signal processor ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) – in short ASP - that reduces the overall power consumption of an ambulatory heart activity signal monitoring systems by more than 5 times. This is a major step towards autonomous wireless sensor systems, which constantly monitor the patient’s health for diagnosis of chronic illness.

Based on its recent research on the wearable energy harvesters market, Frost & Sullivan presents Holst Centre and imec with the 2009 European Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation for its wearable electrocardiograph energy harvesting solution, which provides tens of microwatts of energy per square centimetre for modules with 3x4 cm2 dimensions. Due to its convenience of use, self powering, and low maintenance, this has opened the way f...

The January issue of the premier scientific magazine Nature Photonics publishes an ultra-small and fast, electrically pumped all-optical memory on a silicon chip with record low power consumption. This result achieved by imec and its associated laboratory INTEC at the Ghent University, paves the way for optical packet switching with drastically reduced overall power consumption in high-speed, high-data rate optical telecommunication systems.

IMEC announced that it will take part in the Green Touch Initiative, a new consortium initiated by Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. The Green Touch Initiative is committed to inventing the technologies that will be at the heart of the next generation of sustainable networks. The consortium has set itself the goal of creating technologies necessary to achieve a 1000 fold improvement in the future power consumption of the Internet and...

At this weeks International Electron Devices Conference, the nanoelectronics research center imec presents an innovative, simple and robust GaN-on-Si double heterostructure FET (field effect transistor) architecture for GaN-on-Si power switching devices. The architecture meets the normally-off requirements of power switching circuits and is characterized by low leakage and high breakdown voltage, both essential parameters to reduce the power los...

At the International Electronics Devices Meeting, Holst Centre, imec and TNO presented the world-first organic transponder circuit with a bit rate of 50kbits/s. This bit rate approaches the requirements for the Electronic Product Coding (EPC) standards.

For the first time, a piezoelectric harvesting device fabricated by MEMS technology generates a record of 85μW electrical power from vibrations. A wafer level packaging method was developed for robustness. The packaged MEMS-based harvester is used to power a wireless sensor node. Within the Holst Centre program on Micropower Generation and Storage, imec researchers developed a temperature sensor that can wirelessly transmit data in a fully ...