SUNY Polytechnic University is helping make New York State a leader in semiconductor manufacturing. Formed in 2014 through the merger of the SUNY Institute of Technology and the University of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, the public research university has campuses in Albany and Marcy, New York. Last summer, a public-private consortium led by SUNY Poly won a $110-million federal grant for an Integrated Photonics Institute in Rochester. Recently, SUNY Poly won another major prize.
In February, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that SUNY Poly in Albany will host the Advanced Patterning and Productivity Center (AAPC), a research facility that’s expected to lead to the creation of 100 new jobs. The $500-million agreement includes GlobalFoundries whose Fab 8 computer chip factory in Malta employees 2,900 workers, and builds upon work that’s already been done by IBM in extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). GlobalFoundries acquired IBM’s microelectronics business in July 2015.
IBM has been operating its own EUV machine at SUNY Poly for several years, and has used the $200-million equipment to fabricate the world’s first 7-nanometer prototype chip with functional transistors. Through the AAPC, a second patterning machine will be ordered and installed at SUNY Poly. This will enable GlobalFoundries to incorporate EUV, a next-generation lithography technology, into geometries with features so small that they approach atomic levels.
The AAPC announcement, said SUNY Poly president Alain Kaloyeros, “is a direct result of Governor Cuomo’s innovation-driven economic development model”. Gary Patton, GlobalFoundries Chief Technology Officer (CTO), also praised the AAPC, which will include IBM, Tokyo Electron, and other industry suppliers and chip makers. “Together with SUNY Poly,” Patton said, the GlobalFoundries-run center “will improve our capabilities and position us to advance our process geometries at 7 nanometer and beyond.”
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