IMEC established a beachhead in Taiwan with an office in the Hsinchu Science Park. IMEC Taiwan initially starts as a representative office but is expected to grow into an R&D center within the coming 6 months.

IMEC, a Belgian R&D institute, wants to facilitate the access for Taiwanese semiconductor companies to IMEC's research programs and tap into local high technology skills. The establishment of IMEC Taiwan follows several memoranda of understanding and collaborations between IMEC and leading Taiwanese companies, R&D institutes and universities, with the strong support of the National Science Council Taiwan.

IMEC intends to focus on semiconductor process technology research with foundries, on IC and system design with companies and academia, on dedicated training, on facilitating the interaction between Europractice IC service and the Taiwanese foundries for low-cost IC prototyping and small volume production, and on developing heterogeneous process technologies for fablite and fabless companies.

IMEC is a world-leading independent research center in nanoelectronics and nanotechnology. Its research focuses on the next generations of chips and systems, and on the enabling technologies for ambient intelligence. IMEC is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, has a sister company in the Netherlands, IMEC-NL, concentrating on wireless autonomous transducer solutions. Its staff of more than 1600 people includes more than 500 industrial residents and guest researchers. In 2007, its revenue is estimated at about $343 million.

• IMEC's R&D activities include:  
• CMOS-based nanoelectronics
• Nanotechnology and post-CMOS nanoelectronics
• Characterization, reliability and modeling
• Multi-mode multimedia (M4) technologies
• Wireless autonomous transducer solutions
• Solar cells
• Advanced packaging and interconnection technologies
• Power-efficient devices based on III-V Materials (GaN, GaAs...)
• Bioelectronics
• Organic electronics
• RF devices and technology
• Design technologies 

Contact:
Gilbert Declerck, president and CEO, IMEC, www.imec.be