A team formed in Europe to develop capacitors inside semiconductor chips

Infineon along with 17 companies and research institutes in the semiconductor and automotive sector are collaborating to develop Chip-Mounted Capacitors. The research project is named as "MaxCaps"

Normally innovation in passive electronics components goes at snail speed compared to semiconductor chip development. Here comes some good news where the unavoidable electronic component capacitor can get integrated on semiconductor chip itself.

The goal of this research team is to integrate capacitor elements on silicon chips to reduce the number of discrete capacitors currently mounted on printed circuit boards (PCB) by up to 30 %. This technology also makes more space available on PCB.
The portable electronics is the target market for this technology where real estate on matters a lot.

The material researchers in this team are looking for alternatives to the silicon dioxide and silicon nitride materials currently used as dielectrics in chip manufacturing. They are hunting for material with higher dielectric properties, which can be easily formed on silicon substrate.

The 17 research partners are makers of chemicals and deposition equipment, semiconductor manufacturers, system suppliers to the automotive industry, research institutes, and universities: Air Liquide (France), Aixtron (Germany), Analog Devices (Ireland), ASMI (Belgium, France, Finland), Bronkhorst High-Tech B.V. (Netherlands), CEA-LETI (France), Continental (Germany), IHP - Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics / Leibniz Institut fuer innovative Mikroelektronik (Germany), IMEC (Belgium), Infineon Technologies (Germany), NXP (Netherlands, Belgium), Oxford Instruments (UK), R3T (Germany), SAFC Hightech (UK), STMicroelectronics (France), Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), Tyndall National Institute (Ireland), and the University of Helsinki (Finland).