Looking back on the MinimalFAB Seminar
We look back at a very inspiring and successful MinimalFAB Seminar. During this half day, we got a good insight of what the MinimalFAB concept is, why it is needed and what it can do.
The event was kicked off by Barry Peet (managing director BCSEMI NL), who gave us some more insight in the Dutch Semicon network and zoomed in on why the concept of MinimalFAB could be relevant and interesting for this ecosystem.
After that, Marcel Grooten (CEO of DoMicro) explained the audience some background on how he got in contact with the MinimalFAB concept and Dr Hara.
During the next slot, some words were spoken by Keiji Takigawa (General Director of Tokyo Boeki (RUS) LLC, Russian distributor of the MinimalFAB concept), about their vision on the opportunities of the MinimalFAB.
MinimalFAB concept
The main presentation during the Seminar was given by the ‘father’ of the concept: Dr Shiro Hara (Principal Research Scientist and Group Leader at Nanoelectronics Research Institute of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)). He started with an extensive overview of the current fab/foundries in US and Asia, Europe, to show the ‘gap’ that exists with regards to affordable low volume chip production. Based on this need, Dr Hara developed the MinimalFAB concept and explained in his presentation the current status of the concept.
After the coffee-break, Dr Kenji Miyake (Executive Officer of PMT Com) gave us insight in how they use the MinimalFAB already in their backend foundry to do half-inch FanOut WaferLevel Packaging. This very concrete application of the MinimalFAB showed us the backend potential.
We ended the Seminar with a discussion, led by Matthijs van Kooten (Director of Technology at DoMicro) and Marcel and Barry, on what opportunities the participants see on the concept. During this discussion if was clear that there are still a lot of questions (for example on the exact capabilities of the current equipment) but also that there were people present from companies that have concrete demand for low-volume chip manufacturing.
The conclusion of the Seminar can be summarised (as was done by Barry Peet) as follows: “The MinimalFAB concept brings new opportunities that are highly needed on low volume affordable chip development and production. The concept is still in development, which brings opportunities for Dutch and European Semicon companies to form a consortium that can cooperate with the Japanese partners to speedup this development. BCSEMI can play an active role in creating such a consortium and will use its network, both in the Netherlands as in Europe, to do so.”