NanoIC, the most ambitious pilot line ever launched within the framework of the European Chips Act, has just been inaugurated in Louvain. With total funding of two and a half billion euros, the infrastructure benefits from seven hundred million euros provided by the European Union, seven hundred million euros by partner states and regions, the balance being provided by industrial players, first and foremost ASML.
Hosted by IMEC, the platform is distinguished by an unprecedented technological positioning in Europe. NanoIC is the first pilot line on the continent to integrate an advanced generation of EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) lithography, allowing the design and testing of chips beyond the two nanometer threshold. Until now, this level of technological maturity was reserved for a very restricted circle of global players, mainly in Asia and the United States, relegating Europe to the role of scientific contributor rather than a leading industrial player.
Designed according to a pre-industrialization logic, NanoIC should allow researchers, start-ups, SMEs and large groups to test new chip designs, equipment and processes in conditions close to production. The stated ambition is to reduce a European structural handicap: the difficulty in transforming cutting-edge research into technologies that can actually be industrialized on the continent. The pilot line does not manufacture in volume, but it constitutes the last link before the fab, a critical space where process validation, reproducibility and industrial credibility come into play.
This positioning makes NanoIC an instrument for structuring the ecosystem, intended to bring together design, equipment and industrial uses, while strengthening European attractiveness for talents and advanced microelectronics projects. In a context of increased global competition over production capacities and skills, Europe now agrees to invest massively in the most critical technologies, even without immediate guarantee of large-scale industrial benefits.
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NanoIC is part of a set of five European pilot lines (NanoIC, FAMES, APECS, WBG and PIXEurope) representing three billion seven hundred million euros in cumulative public investments. Their commissioning constitutes one of the operational pillars of the Chips for Europe Initiative, almost four years after the initial announcement of the Chips Act by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
If NanoIC is structuring, it is also because it conditions the future, its rate of use, the nature of the projects that it will host and its capacity to lead to concrete industrial decisions will weigh heavily in the discussions already underway around a Chips Act 2.0.
