Last week I had the joy of taking a tour of the Electrum Lab in Kista, Sweden. It is a cleanroom and semiconductor fab used for research, teaching, and commercial activities. I had heard about it for a long time, but I had absolutely no idea what they were doing there. Turns out to be quite impressive and important.
The lab belongs to KTH (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan or the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm), and is located in the Electrum building. It has some 1300 square meters of clean room, used for a variety of purposes. It is not a full-fledged “fab” like what you find at a player like TSMC, Intel, or Samsung, and does not feature cutting-edge silicon manufacturing machinery.
The Electrum Lab is part of the four-lab MyFab collaboration that also includes cleanroom facilities at Chalmers in Gothenburg, Uppsala, and Lund Universities. The labs coordinate to avoid duplication of facilities, and researchers can book lab time using a unified scheduling system.
I cannot claim to understand much about chip manufacturing (I am a software-oriented computer scientist after all). But it is still cool to see the machines used to create the machines on which software will eventually run. Or rather, the machines used to research the technologies that will one day be used to build the machines that will build the machines.
The lobby contains some display cases showing devices manufactured in the lab and some wafers and substrates. The lab specializes in Silicon Carbide, and had some SiC wafers on display.
Thanks to Cariana Zaring and Mikael Östling for arranging our visit and guiding us around the lab!
Teaching
The lab is also used in teaching. For example, students at the nanotechnology master’s program at KTH go through the steps to get a set of transistors etched onto a chip. Each group of students get to perform one of the steps in the process and get half a day or so of lab time to do it. It used to be possible to give the students days in the lab and for each group to do all the steps. But that is no longer economically feasible. Which is sad.
Chiplets
It is well-established practice to combine chiplets manufactured in different silicon processes into a single product. Like Intel’s Meteor Lake using four different processes from two different foundries for five chiplets. But you can take this further and combine different materials. For instance, using SiC for some chiplets or interposers to take advantage of its unique properties.
Commercial Use
Some of the space in the lab is rented out to commercial companies to use for research and development work. It is not easy for a small startup to afford their own cleanroom, and by renting out space the Electrum lab helps the startup scene and gets funding to keep the lab going. Wins for all.
Some of the companies associated with the lab had their products on the display. Like the above chip from IRNova – I assume it is some form of IR sensor.
Another category of products that is associated with the research at KTH and the lab is MEMS sensors. Silex is a major local player with their own cleanroom and fab for MEMS fabrication, where the founders originally came from the KTH research based around the Electrum lab.
Machines are Cool
To be honest, the lab also serves as a reminder of the fact that the manufacturing industry for semiconductors in Sweden has shrunk over the years. Several machines in the lab were bought at good prices from factories that were shut down.