The Etna Valley will be a main European semiconductors hub

The Etna Valley will be one of the four leading development areas in the EU strategy to make Europe's semiconductors market more resilient and self-sufficient. The Chips Joint Undertaking initiative is a key component in this strategy - formalised at the end of 2023, it aims to strengthen the European semiconductors manufacturing ecosystem by allocating nearly 11 billion euros by 2030 - and it is now going to fund a specific infrastructure development in Catania.

Chips JU spending for the next years is focused on four specific semiconductors technology developments (fully depleted silicon on insulator, leading-edge nodes below 2nm, heterogeneous system integration and assembly, wide-band semiconductors) and on the construction of the four pilot production lines that will show how to use them in real innovative products.

Like all JU programmes, the basic idea for ChipsJU is to use public and private funds to facilitate the development of innovative technologies that would not be able to be developed as quickly by following market rules alone. Also because European companies in most cases do not have the size and thus the investment capacity of their US and Chinese counterparts. If Europe wants to play a leading role - and achieve its own autonomy - in the chip market, EU-wide development strategies are mandatory.

One of the ChipsJU pilot lines will be developed in Italy: in Catania, where an international consortium led by CNR and the Chips.IT Foundation will modernize and extend some already existing semiconductor facilities. Such as the “Beyond Nano” research facility, developed in 2020 by CNR, Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR), Regione Sicilia and STMicroelectronics. The new Italian ChipsJU infrastructure will also be available to local companies, to help them in developing innovative devices based on new technologies and materials.