Industrial Microelectronics towards the Year 2000: A Report on Objectives and Results of a Research Collaboration at the Center for Industrial Research and the University of Oslo

The Center for Industrial Research (SI), the University of Oslo (UiO) and a group of Norwegian companies have collaborated between 1990 and 1992 in the research programme ‘Industrial Microelectronics’ with a total cost of 30 MNOK. The programme was sponsored by the Norwegian Scientific and Industrial Research Council (NTNF) as one of the twin programmes constituting a national research initiative in microelectronics. The motivation for the programme is the recognition of microelectronics as a key technology commanding the performance and market success of many of the electronics systems from the Norwegian electronics industry towards the year 2000. The main objective is to stimulate industrial innovation by developing, transferring and exploiting knowledge and methods based upon advanced microelectronics. Focused activities are silicon sensor technology, combined analogue/digital design of application‐specific integrated circuits, large scale instrumentation, sensor packaging and thermal management of electronic systems. SI is focusing on applied research, UiO on education, and collaborating Norwegian companies are using the results in their own R&D projects. It is anticipated that the research results will be fully industrialised within 3–5 years. The programme is co‐ordinated with other Norwegian government‐sponsored research activities as well as European research programmes based on microelectronics. The programme is organised in projects and monitored with a set of milestones strongly indicating the achievement of successful industrial innovation, research results of international standing and high‐quality education of key personnel for the industry. Several successful examples of the research results are highlighted: Design and process methodology for double‐sided microstrip silicon radiation sensors for detection of high energy elementary particles, silicon‐to‐silicon and silicon‐to‐thin film anodic bonding processes for sensor fabrication, combined analogue/digital application‐specific integrated circuits for front‐end instrumentation applications, packaging of radiation sensors and thermal management of electronic systems by evaporation cooling. It is concluded that the programme has successfully achieved results in harmony with the objective.