Europe, and therefore the Czech Republic, faces the challenge of becoming less dependent on imports of chips and semiconductor components from Asia. Supply chain bottlenecks have been highlighted in particular by the Covid-19 pandemic. The country's National Semiconductor Strategy, which is now undergoing an inter-ministerial comment process, seeks to build domestic research and manufacturing facilities to help prevent such crises in the future.

The National Semiconductor Strategy is followed by a partnership of Czech universities. The purpose of the memorandum concluded between CTU, VUT and UWB, each of which covers a specific segment of the semiconductor value chain, is to create an educational and scientific research platform. While the domain of CTU and BUT is chip design, i.e. IP chip design, UWB dominates in the application area of power electronics. The merger of the three universities will allow to share capacities, coordinate higher education, research and development and cooperate especially in the field of education in order to ensure sufficient human resource capacity for the Czech semiconductor industry.

"Analyses show that the Czech Republic is strong in the production of power electronics, with almost 90% of the publicly funded research and development capacity in this area at UWB," said Rector Miroslav Lávička. Research and development of semiconductors at UWB is carried out by the RICE research centre at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. It cooperates with industrial partners on the development of modern technologies. "The declared partnership with CTU and BUT is another step towards strengthening our position in the field of semiconductor technologies at the national and European level," he added.

As part of the memorandum, the universities agreed to strengthen cooperation in education, research and development, particularly in the key areas of microelectronics, power electronics, semiconductor technologies, semiconductor solutions and their applications. Semiconductors and chips are essential for the future development of industries such as automotive, aerospace, electron microscopy and energy.

"The Czech Republic occupies an important sixth place in the European semiconductor value chain and is one of the key players, especially in the chip design segment. Furthermore, it is a respected supplier in a number of application areas where chips are used, for example, predominantly in electron microscopy, in which it is even the world leader, but also in the automotive industry or power electronics," said Ladislav Janicek, Rector of the BUT, adding: "This platform, which we are establishing by signing a memorandum between three universities in the field of semiconductor technologies, is open to the involvement of other academic and research institutions in the Czech Republic in the semiconductor ecosystem we are building."

The joint efforts of the universities should help the Czech Republic to become a major player in the field of semiconductor technologies and contribute to ensuring the technological independence of Europe. In 2022, the European Union passed the EU Chips Act to position it as a key global player in this sector. The aim is to double the EU's share of the global semiconductor market to 20 % by 2030. It has earmarked more than €43 billion for this purpose.

The efforts of the three universities have been recognised by the Minister for Science and Research. "This is exactly the path I am calling for. Because only cooperation between several universities will allow the Czech Republic to increase its influence and strengthen its role at the international level, whether it is semiconductor technology or another of our priorities," said Minister Marek Ženíšek.

 Author: Andrea Čandová, The University of West Bohemia in Pilsen