Maintenance Mindset: 7 industry innovations, led by STEM

Welcome to Maintenance Mindset, our editors’ takes on things going on in the worlds of manufacturing and asset management that deserve some extra attention. This will appear regularly in the Member’s Only section of the site.

Where science and the economy intersect is often where we find businesses innovating. What technologies are trending and how does the economy and connecting government research and development (R&D) with modern-day production can help drive innovation. In covering the manufacturing industry, I’ve always been interested in the science and engineering side of innovation, and I’ve written about many of those topics here (spectroscopy technology, a welding machine in space, the developing U.S. industrial energy storage and battery manufacturing market, and zettascale supercomputers).

Instead, this roundup is a quick look back at developments from the last month or so in scientific research and funding from government and universities that is poised to benefit manufacturing and industry.

Much of the recent work is focused on U.S. semiconductor production for technology research, CHIPS funding, and developing U.S. industry leadership. Government is also leading the way in new technologies like fusion energy and new highly accurate thermometers that measure at the atomic level. This collection also includes one funding opportunity from the Department of Energy for chemical and material sciences research. Also, hop onboard a spaceship project at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, where researchers are gearing up to study manufacturing in space.

$179M in funding for Microelectronics Science Research Centers

On December 23, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $179 million in funding for three Microelectronics Science Research Centers (MSRCs). They will perform basic research in microelectronics materials, device and system design, and manufacturing science in order to transform future microelectronics technologies. DOE says that it is both a consumer of microelectronics and an engine for development in the field, leading many breakthroughs in the industry. The MSRCs were authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.

More research is needed in the areas of microelectronics energy efficiency, and operating in extreme environments, including high-radiation, cryogenic, and high magnetic field environments. The three MSRCs are:

The Microelectronics Energy Efficiency Research Center for Advanced Technologies (MEERCAT) is focused on intelligent sensing, data bandwidth, multiplexing and advanced computing to explore solutions that bridge sensing, edge processing, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.
The Co-design and Heterogeneous Integration in Microelectronics for Extreme Environments (CHIME) will drive advancements in extreme environment electronics, including extreme thermal and radiation environments.
The Extreme Lithography & Materials Innovation Center (ELMIC) will advance the fundamental science driving the integration of new materials and processes into future microelectronics systems, focusing on key areas such as plasma-based nanofabrication, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photo sources, 2D-material systems, and extreme-scale memory.

The centers operate as a network of projects, 16 projects are being led out of 10 national laboratories. Projects were selected through a competitive DOE peer review process in 2024, and funding appropriations are contingent on Congressional approval.

Natcast to operate National Semiconductor Technology Center

On January 16, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) awarded Natcast up to $6.3 billion to operate the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) under a long-term agreement. The partnership will extend U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology, reduce the time and cost to prototype, and build and sustain a semiconductor workforce ecosystem. In February 2024, the Biden administration announced an initial $5 billion investment for NSTC. More than 100 members have committed to join the NSTC since the program launched in fall 2024.

This award will fund NSTC programs and activities for the next 10 years to meet the strategic goals of the NSTC Strategic Plan, released in October 2024. This includes funding for Natcast to invest in research and development, workforce development, an investment fund, the Design Enablement Gateway, silicon aggregation services, and technical centers. The company will also operate the CHIPS for America R&D flagship facilities on behalf of the NSTC.

This also follows an earlier $1.1 billion funding award to Natcast for advanced packaging activities and capabilities from the CHIPS for America National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program (NAPMP) Prototyping and NAPMP Advanced Packaging Piloting Facility (PPF).

CHIPS funding for U.S. semiconductor manufacturers

On January 16, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the signing of four separate non-binding preliminary memoranda of terms (PMT) under the CHIPS and Science Act to provide $105 million in direct funding to Analog Devices Inc., Coherent Corp., Intelligent Epitaxy Technology, and Sumika Semiconductor Materials Texas.

$105 million to Analog Devices (Chelmsford, Massachusetts; Beaverton, Oregon; Camas, Washington)

The proposed funding for Analog Devices would support the expansion and modernization of two advanced research & development (R&D) and radio frequency (RF) microwave (MW) systems manufacturing facilities in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, to increase module production output for its packaging and test facility. This would expand capacity for commercial, space, and defense applications as well as new commercial phased array antenna and sensor solutions.
Funding to expand and modernize two semiconductor fabrication facilities in Beaverton, Oregon and Camas, Washington, which could create up to an estimated 500 manufacturing and engineering jobs. The funding will support the expansion of front-end mature node semiconductor manufacturing for devices used in a wide variety of applications, including but not limited to automotive, industrial, and defense applications, and to increase capacity at the facilities by 70% across a variety of mature node processes, including onshoring 180nm and 350nm process nodes.
Analog Devices will also launch the Semiconductor Advanced Manufacturing Upskilling (SAMU) technician training facility to offer programs to support manufacturers and collaborators in the Silicon Forest.

$79 million to Coherent Corp., Easton, Pennsylvania

The proposed investment for Coherent would support its expansion of an existing manufacturing facility to increase production capacity of 150mm and 200mm silicon carbide (SiC) substrates and the expansion of the facility’s SiC epitaxial wafer manufacturing capacity, back-end of line processing, electronic performance, and reliability testing capabilities. SiC substrates are an important bandgap material with end uses in energy and military applications, and this funding would expand production capacity by more 750,000 substrates per year and more than double the output of epitaxial wafers per year. The proposed investment in Coherent and the expansion of its existing manufacturing facility would create approximately 360 jobs.

$10.3 million to Intelligent Epitaxy Technology (IntelliEPI), Allen, Texas

The proposed investment in IntelliEPI would support the expansion and modernization of its existing manufacturing facility to increase production of epitaxial wafers and could create 40 manufacturing jobs and 16 construction jobs. IntelliEPI is a provider of epitaxy wafers for advanced compound semiconductor applications, specializing in the growth of high-quality epitaxy material on Indium Phosphide (“InP”), Gallium Arsenide (“GaAs”), Gallium Antimonide (“GaSb”), and Gallium Nitride (“GaN”) compound semiconductor wafers based on an advanced production Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) technology platform.

$52.1 million in funding to Sumika Semiconductor Materials Texas, Baytown, Texas

The proposed investment in Sumika would support the construction of a greenfield factory in Baytown, Texas, to manufacture ultra-high purity (UHP) isopropyl alcohol (IPA) used in advanced logic and memory chip production. Sumika is a subsidiary of the Japan-based Sumitomo Chemical Co., LTD, a global producer of high-purity chemicals for the semiconductor industry. UHP IPA production is almost entirely concentrated in East Asia, and the proposed investment represents the company’s first major investment in high-purity chemicals production in the U.S.

$107 Million DOE funding for commercial fusion energy research

On January 16, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science announced $107 million in funding for six projects as part of its strategy to research the viability of commercial fusion energy. The new projects under the Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) Collaboratives, combined with the Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, where several privately funded fusion companies have completed early critical-path science and technology milestones are the cornerstones of DOE’s fusion strategy.

Both programs, administered by DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program in the Office of Science, are aimed at creating a fusion energy science and technology innovation ecosystem by forming virtual, centrally managed teams called “collaboratives” that have a collective goal of bridging FES’s basic science research programs with the needs of the growing fusion industry, including the activities supported under the Milestone Program. FES announced the first awards for the FIRE Collaboratives that support materials and technologies required by a diverse set of fusion concepts, including:

nuclear blanket testing capabilities development at Idaho National Laboratory, materials development at the University of Tennessee – Knoxville
materials testing and advanced simulation capabilities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
target injector technology for inertial fusion energy concepts, and fusion fuel-cycle testing capabilities at Savannah River National Laboratory.

NIST creates new atom-based thermometer

In January, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that its scientists have created a new thermometer, which uses atoms boosted to such high energy levels that they are a thousand times larger than normal. By monitoring how these giant “Rydberg” atoms interact with heat in their environment, researchers can measure temperature with remarkable accuracy.

NIST says the thermometer’s sensitivity could improve temperature measurements in fields ranging from quantum research to industrial manufacturing. Unlike traditional thermometers, a Rydberg thermometer doesn’t need to be first adjusted or calibrated at the factory because it relies inherently on the basic principles of quantum physics. These fundamental quantum principles yield precise measurements that are also directly traceable to international standards. The research was published in Physical Review Research.

$40M DOE funding opportunity for domain science, applied mathematics and computer science collaboration

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, under the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) programs, is issuing a $40 million notice of funding opportunity to support the advancement of Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) Partnerships to enable or accelerate scientific discovery. The SciDAC program was initiated in 2001 to develop the scientific computing and software and hardware infrastructure to support supercomputers.

These interdisciplinary collaborations between domain scientists and applied mathematicians and/or computer scientists are expected to advance results that could not be accomplished by those same researchers working separately. SciDAC Partnerships in BES will perform fundamental research on one of three topics:

complex dynamical systems for energy-relevant chemical and/or physical systems and materials
reliable and explainable artificial intelligence for chemical and/or physical mechanism extraction from phenomena
foundation models for chemical and materials sciences.

University researchers take the next steps in space manufacturing project

In December 2024, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers started a new phase of its space manufacturing project, called Mission Illinois, to send a composite tube manufacturing machine to the International Space Station to produce new materials for space construction. The mission is supported by four and a half years of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded research in space materials, manufacturing and structural design at the university.

“The goal of this project is to test an energy-efficient chemical process that transforms a liquid material into a solid material — known as curing — to enable on-orbit manufacturing and construction of large space structures such as new space telescopes, radio frequency antennas and other sensors with high-dimensional and mechanical precision and mass efficiency over massive sizes, some more than 300 meters in diameter,” said mechanical science and engineering professor Sameh Tawfick, who is leading the project. “We manufacture carbon fiber composite tubes that can then be assembled into space trusses on-demand, rapidly and with minimal energy use.”

The original project, DARPA’s Novel Orbital Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass Efficient Design program, started in 2021, and this is the project’s third phase. The team has 18 months to complete the mission with the last six months dedicated to launching into space, connecting to the International Space Station, and having astronauts perform the experiments.

Manufacturing-led innovation

Industry can’t do it alone, and government won’t succeed on its own either. It will take collaboration. I read a great book a few years ago, called Workforce Education: A New Roadmap by MIT scholars William B. Bonvillian and Sanjay E. Sarma, that helps break down the historical basis for our struggling industrial workforce. They also outline an important distinction between R&D-led innovation and manufacturing-led innovation. Where the U.S. largely relies on entrepreneurial start-ups with venture capital financing to do the innovating, a small percentage of that venture funding investment goes toward actual product manufacturing, and scaling innovations become difficult.

They argue that R&D-led innovation leaves the production stages out of the innovation system, ultimately disconnecting technology development from U.S. manufacturing.
Government and industry have made efforts to coordinate technology development, most recently around onshoring semiconductor production, and these stories highlight government support of industry directly and the important research being done that will steer future manufacturers.

Note: there has been a slew of federal government cuts, layoffs, closings, and budget blockades as the new administration took office in January. In my research for this article, at the time of publication, some of the websites for programs mentioned in this article were no longer active – the National Semiconductor Technology Center Strategic Plan and the U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Energy Sciences Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. I’ll be keeping an eye on these federal institutions for more updates on science technology research and any changes to current programs.