With some 500 engineers qualifying each year, training is a decisive asset for Minatec
Motorola steps up cooperation with CEA-Leti
Startup news
Record investments in the valley
Last minute: Motorola joins Crolles 2
Japanese increasingly interested in Minatec
Observatory gathering momentum
For your diary

Of the €150m invested in Minatec, almost €45m will be spent on training. This gives some idea of how important it is for the organizations behind Grenoble's centre for micro and nanotechnology innovation, in particular CEA and INPG.

" We award some 400 degrees to engineers and PhDs in the various subjects* related to micro and nanotechnology (materials, technologies, components, systems, etc.)," explains Claude Gaubert, an INPG faculty member. "By 2005 the figure will have doubled to attain 500. We shall be able to cater for fast growing demand in business and research laboratories." With Université Joseph Fourier (UJF) producing identical results, Grenoble ranks as France's largest training centre in this field.

New courses
Most of these courses are taught at INPG, Enserg (electronics), ENSPG (materials), Enseeg (physical chemistry), Ensimag (computer
science) and in the Telecommunications department. They draw on the resources of the Cime technology platform. New subjects are being introduced:
systems on chip (SoC),
microsystems (including materials as from 2003),
biotechnology, and particularly biochips, at the meeting point between life science and nanotechnology,
facility design.
The new programmes go hand in hand with the extension of existing technology platforms to boost the practical training of engineers and PhDs. Over the last three years Cime has introduced a serious of practical modules.
Assignments include designing and testing SoCs, producing microsensors in a clean room, and production and characterization of biochips, in partnership with Leti-CEA.
The university and INPG can count on input from trail-blazing affiliated laboratories, notably Imep, Tima and LMGP, the support of CEA-Leti and the Minatec dynamic to respond rapidly to industry's demands for micro and nanotechnology.


France's first centre
The completion of Minatec will give a big boost to micro and nanotechnology teaching at INPG.
When the various technology platforms operated by Cime, ENSPG and Enserg move to Minatec, they will give the centre technological resources on a par with its ambitions in initial and continuous training. 750 sq m of new clean room will be devoted to training and research under the aegis of Cime. This facility will be accompanied by the development of design and test tools for microelectronics, optoelectronics and hyperfrequencies. All in all, INPG and its other academic partners will have at their disposal France's top technology platform for micro and nanotechnology training.
In the meantime the scope of initial and continuous training courses, at engineer and PhD level, will be extended. In addition to the new courses proposed by various schools, several changes and new projects are under study:
Changes to the content of engineering courses to make more room for nanophysics and nanoscience, with corresponding additions to the technology available at Cime.
Start of a new postgraduate course on engineering of controlled atmosphere (clean concept) industrial facilities.
Additional teaching for PhD students on nanoscience and advanced micro and nanoelectronic devices.
Start of summer courses and schools, in particular an international post-doctorate school on nanotechnology and nanoscience (in the same spirit as the Hercules programme organized around major research facilities involving CEA, UJF and INPG).
Launch of international programmes (similar to masters degrees) for foreign students in partnership with universities abroad.
Development of continuous training schemes in micro and nanotechnology, leading up to a qualification or diploma.

Continuous training in line with industry's needs
Microelectronics also accounts for a large part of INPG's contribution to continuous training. Every year Cime takes several hundred trainees for specialist courses. At the same time there are several longer programmes, leading up to a degree. They target technicians with working experience who want to add to their knowledge and skills, and gain executive status. In some cases, training leads to an engineering degree. Some 30 technicians from companies in the micro and nanotechnology sector attend these courses each year.
Continuous training in microelectronics and microsystems has enjoyed spectacular growth in the last two years, since INPG set up a special centre for this purpose. It works in close partnership with Rhône-Alpes industry and draws on the specialist skills of local academics, and the technical resources of Cime and Leti-CEA. In just two years the centre has dispensed more than 5,500 hours of training!
With continuous training of this calibre, Minatec will be a prime partner for firms in Rhône-Alpes and all over Europe.

* materials engineers, technologists, specialists in testing, design, systems, architecture, optoelectronics or radiofrequency.

Signature of a three-year cooperation agreement to develop accelerometers and production technology.

70 billion accelerometers will be sold in 2002 to equip airbags in cars. This figure is some indication of the stupendous development in store for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). They play a central role in accelerometers and in many other applications. Motorola is the world's leading manufacturer of embedded processors and already active in this booming market. It has just signed a three-year agreement with CEA-Leti. The aim is to speed up development of a new generation of accelerometers, that will be smaller, cheaper and, above all, more accurate. By achieving a better signal-to-noise ratio the projected systems will be able to measure acceleration 50 times smaller than with existing systems.
The devices will play a central role in new systems for adjusting a vehicle's position on the road. Leti has the capacity to produce sensors of this type on 200 mm silicon wafers (at a correspondingly low cost) here in Grenoble. In 2003 samples will be submitted to Motorola's customers, with mass production starting in 2004. Motorola's management has already announced that cooperation will be extended to other programmes.

Fruitful negotiations ::

Soisic is a CEA-Leti offshoot and the first company in the world to focus exclusively on developing integrated circuits on SOI. It has just raised an initial €4m from US and European investors, as well as Soitec, the world's leading manufacturer of SOI substrates. Soisic has opted to concentrate on low-power, high-speed circuits, targeting in particular the mobile communications markets. In addition, the company, which currently employs some 20 people, plans to market a library of digital components and analog functions, the aim being to speed up the development of complex SoCs.

Xenocs was founded by a former researcher at ILL (Institut Laue-Langevin).
The startup specializes in the production of optical multilayers for next-generation integrated circuits. Siparex Ventures and ABN Amro Capital France have just decided to invest €3.5m to support growth. Xenocs has already notched up export sales worth more than €1m.le.

Tronics moves to Centr'Alp
Tronics, another MEMS manufacturer, is moving to the Centr'Alp business park. More space will enable it to substantially increase annual production capacity from a few thousand to several million sensors.
Tronics emerged from CEA-Leti in 1997 and will be receiving an exceptional grant from Isère's Departmental Council worth €275k to fund the operation. The company employs 20 people and turned over €1.5m in 2001.

Faure Ingénierie looking at clean room operation
Faure Ingénierie specializes in controlled-atmosphere clean rooms.
The firm, which is located in Bernin (50 people, €30m turnover in 2001), has just signed an agreement with Dalkia France, a subsidiary of Vivendi Environnement and EDF.
The aim is to set up a new entity devoted entirely to turnkey installation and technical operation of clean rooms for microelectronics, electronics and pharmaceuticals..

Subsidiary in the US for Teem Photonics
Teem Photonics manufactures photonics solutions for optical networks (VDI).
It has just opened a US subsidiary, which will be led by Brian McCornack.

Minatec benefits from the proximity of several advanced technology parks, in Grenoble itself and elsewhere in Isère. Of the sites capable of meeting the requirements of microtechnology companies, the Crolles-Bernin location has already convinced two world leaders.

STMicroelectronics, the world's third largest manufacturer of semiconductors, Soitec, the world leader for silicon on insulator (SOI), and Memscap, one of the area's most promising startups and a more recent arrival, have all opted for the Crolles-Bernin technology park.
The park is located in the Grésivaudan valley, about 20 kilometres from Minatec and on the main route from Grenoble to Geneva. Over the last three years more than €1bn have been invested there, thanks to STMicroelectronics, Philips, Soitec, Applied Materials, Memscap and a host of budding startups and equipment manufacturers. A record, that puts the Crolles-Bernin park in Europe's top league for microtechnology investment.
The most recent example, and one of the most striking, is the STMicroelectronics' Crolles 2 facility. The company will be investing some €800m to complete, in the coming months, 3,500 square metres of additional clean room space, ready to produce 300 mm wafers with a 0.18 micron technology. The finished chips are mainly designed for multimedia and system-on-chip applications. Each one contains about 100 million transistors.

This investment no doubt explains the agreement signed, at the beginning of March 2002, by STMicroelectronics, Philips Semiconductors and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The three firms plan to join forces to research and develop next generation semiconductors, based on 300 mm wafers, with 90 nanometre details. Work will be based at the joint STMicroelectronics-Philips platform, that is part of the Crolles 2 development, and should yield substantial economies of scale, a key factor in bolstering the competitive position of the three partners in the cut-and-thrust semiconductor market.

Minatec will add to a longstanding dynamic between Grenoble university and the scientific research centre - home to CEA-Leti, Europe's top centre for applied microelectronics research, INPG, and several CNRS laboratories. In the 1990s STMicroelectronics, CEA-Leti, and France Telecom set up a joint R&D centre in Crolles. Philips Semiconductor subsequently teamed up with ST to set up Crolles 2. Similarly the SmartCut® process, originally developed by Leti, led to the development of the SOI material on which Soitec has founded its success. After starting life as an offshoot from CEA, the firm went on to find room for growth in Bernin, just next to Crolles. As for Memscap, it coalesced around work on MEMS at Université Joseph Fourier's Tima laboratory. It too has found a new home in the Grésivaudan valley, at Saint Ismier and Crolles. Its systems are becoming increasingly common on mobile phones. In the future technology from Minatec laboratories will fuel continuing growth, to add to the 3,000 jobs already created in Crolles and Bernin. This achievement goes a long way to explain the unswerving backing of local authorities, notably Isère's Departmental Council.

Crolles-Bernin : 30 companies directly concerned by Minatec. The technology parks around Crolles and Bernin are home to 30 companies involved in microtechnology, in particular: STMicroelectronics-Philips : semiconductors, Soitec : silicon-on-insulator (SOI) Memscap : microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), Applied Materials France : equipment for the semiconductor industry, Christ : air treatment, Faure Ingénierie : clean rooms, Cyberfab : software for semiconductor production support on mobile platforms, Mondia Quartz : quartz components for semiconductors

Last minute: Motorola joins Crolles 2 Motorola decided to team up with STMicroelectronics and Philips to develop CMOS process technology from the 90nm node down to 32nm over the next five years. The total investment will reach 2.8 Billion Euros and will be based in Crolles where the companies will build a 300mm fab and R&D center. This project goals worldwide leadership on SOC.

Fuji, Canon, Hitachi, Matsushita, Nissan and Sony are just some of the 70 Japanese firms that attended a seminar in Tokyo, last December, to present Minatec. The event was organized by the Isère Enterprise Board (AEPI). Guests included Professor Iwai, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Professor Fujita (above), from Tokyo University. Jean-Frédéric Clerc, representing CEA-Leti, underlined Grenoble-Isère's micro and nanotechnology potential. He was accompanied by Xavier Arréghi, from the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), CEA's partner. There are already many forms of cooperation linking Grenoble and Japan, notably involving Soitec and SEH in materials. Tokyo University (Lims) is working with several Grenoble startups specializing in MEMS (Memscap and MicroVitae). To follow up the seminar a large number of visits to Grenoble-Isère by Japanese firms and research centres are planned for 2002. AEPI, which has been represented in Japan for many years, will be taking part in Nano Tech 2002 in Tokyo. Next November Grenoble will be playing host to Bio-N2M,
an international conference on micro and nanotechnology applied to biology. This event is the fruit of cooperation with the Lims laboratory in Tokyo, which chose Grenoble on account of the city's reputation, and work carried out by CEA in this field and in biological instrumentation.

In addition to focusing on instrumentation for biology and molecular electronics, the Micro and Nanotechnology Observatory (OMNT) now plans to broaden the scope of its activities, to include three other extremely promising topics: micro-energy sources, nanotechnology, and materials and components for optics. The Observatory has started putting together the corresponding expert networks and the first summary documents will be available during the second quarter of 2002.

Two seminars for the first half-year
OMNT is organizing two new seminars on specific topics. The seminars are primarily designed as a vector for knowledge. Open to all comers, they feature talks by recognized specialists on relatively upstream scientific or technical topics. But the seminars also enable research and industry to meet and discuss specific issues


The first of these seminars focuses on molecular electronics. It is organized in partnership with the CNRS Nanoelectronics research group and will be held in Paris, on 21 May 2002, at the Ministry of Research. The top French experts in this field will present the latest discoveries, outline realistic goals and describe the obstacles yet to be overcome. Molecular electronics aims to produce components, functions and ultimately circuits and full-scale architectures using nanometric building bricks based on either a single molecule or just a few. This bottom-up approach offers a way round the physical barrier into which microelectronics processes seem doomed to run as the size of design details shrinks.
The second seminar will be held in June and will look at plastics and biological microcomponents.


Access to OMNT documents : A subscription is required to access OMNT documents. Valid for one year, it entitles you to five two-monthly updates, an annual summary document, and admission to seminars on specific topics. Contacts: C. Magnet and S. Fontanell: +33 (0)4 38 78 36 82, e-mail : omnt@cea.fr

For your diary

Fourth EC/NSF Workshop on Nanotechnology
Tools & Instruments for Research & Manufacturing
Scientific cooperation between the European Union and the United States (NSF), on 12, 13 and 14 June, in Grenoble;
Contact: JCGuibert@cea.fr

Summer school : Asynchronous Circuit Design
15 to 19 July, in Grenoble. Contact: Marc Renaudin
http://tima.imag.fr/news/ orga_conf. asp

Cases (Compilers, architecture and synthesis for embedded systems)
9 to 11 October, in Grenoble.
Contact: Ahmed A. Jerraya,
http://tima.imag.fr/news/ orga_conf. asp

Bio-N2M'2002
27 to 29 November in Grenoble.
Outlook for Bio-MEMS, DNA chips, microfluidics and integration of biological analysis protocols.
Contact: bio-N2M-2002@cea.fr