Semiconductors

Exploring new materials for chip production and enabling their analysis directly in the production environment – these are the tasks of two scientific teams from #brnoregion – from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Brno University of Technology. Electron microscopes play a key role in their efforts. Thanks to them, as part of the three-year European ALL2GaN project, we can look forward to a solution that has enormous potential to save energy and thus mitigate the climate crisis by reducing CO2 emissions. Indeed, the gallium nitride chips being developed will be used in a wide range of applications including telecommunications and e-mobility.

Behind any science there’s a microscope. And behind any revolutionary findings in medicine, material sciences, or environment protection there are electron microscopes. Used in the laboratories of Nobel Prize holders, production centres of major chip producers or even in hospitals, they affect the lives of people all over the world. And this impact starts here in Brno where every third high-tech instrument like this is produced.

On Friday, October 18, the Advanced Chip Design and Research Center (ACDRC) opened at the premises of the Cyber Security Hub (CSH) in Brno. The center was established as a concrete initiative to strengthen relations between the Czech Republic and Taiwan, representing one of the pillars of this cooperation in the semiconductor sector. On the Czech side, the project is being implemented by experts from three leading Czech universities: Brno University of Technology (BUT), Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), and Masaryk University. The goal is to educate new specialists and support innovation and research in the semiconductor industry, particularly in areas such as cybersecurity, the automotive industry, energy, biomedicine, and telecommunications.

Brno-based startup DYNANIC, born at the Brno University of Technology (VUT), has secured a €550,000 investment from deeptech fund Tensor Ventures and a group of angel investors, including former experts from Dell, AMD, Intel, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. This marks the first investment from Tensor Ventures’ newly launched second fund.