Feb. 18, 2025 –
February 18, 2025 -- The Public Authorities Board of the Chips Joint Undertaking (EU Chips Act) has awarded funding to the APECS pilot line project. The project is part of a major effort to develop European semiconductor production. The project focuses on developing and providing new packaging and integration solutions for the industry. VTT is also involved in the following pilot line projects aiming at semiconductor production: FAMES, NanoIC and PIXEurope.
The APECS (Advanced Packaging and Heterogeneous Integration for Electronic Components and Systems) pilot line, as part of the EU Chips Act programme, will promote European semiconductor manufacturing capability and chip innovation. The pilot line will focus on the development of reliable packaging solutions for microchips and innovative combinations of semiconductor materials and technologies, as well as chiplet integration. As its name suggests, the APECS pilot line will provide technologies to help others develop technology and innovation and will be coordinated by Fraunhofer.
"In the APECS project, VTT will focus in particular on the radio frequency technologies required for the 6G network and on the development and demonstration of optical microsystems and chip packaging methods," says Tauno Vähä-Heikkilä, Vice President, Microelectronics and Quantum Technologies at VTT.
VTT is involved in other European pilot projects: The FAMES and NanoIC pilot lines are run by CEA-Leti of France and imec of Belgium. In October, we published news about our collaboration on the EU-funded CEA-Let and imec FAMES and NanoIC pilot projects. Through the pilot lines, Finland is strongly involved in the European semiconductor ecosystem. The pilot lines provide services to companies to develop products and scale them up for production. Technologies under development include the latest transistor and RF technologies, new memory technologies and packaging technologies.