To secure global competitiveness in the semiconductor industry and enhance technological industrialization, domestic researchers are actively pursuing cooperation with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for semiconductor technology research.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced on the 6th that it had agreed to establish a mutual cooperation system for semiconductor technology development at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, USA.

ETRI has possessed the technology to develop and manufacture silicon detectors for high-energy particle detectors since the early 2000s, and is the only government-funded research institute in Korea capable of silicon batch processing.

ANL has been collaborating with ETRI since 2023 to produce complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit (IC)-integrated silicon detectors (MAPS).

Through this collaborative effort, the researchers and ANL will work together to develop new semiconductor technologies to detect and analyze high-energy particles in space environments.

ETRI President Seung-chan Bang said, “We expect that the business agreement for cooperation in the semiconductor field will open up opportunities for a new leap forward toward the future by combining ANL’s research capabilities and ETRI’s technological prowess.”

ANL director Paul Kearns also said:“We hope that this will serve as a foundation for technological advancement between the two countries by expanding cooperation not only in the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) but also in various other technological fields in the future,” he said.

Through this business agreement, ETRI plans to secure competitiveness in semiconductor technology that can withstand extreme environments of high and low temperatures and strong radiation by working towards domestic production of semiconductor detectors, and contribute to the advancement of technology industrialization in the aerospace and defense fields.

Meanwhile, on this day, ETRI held a meeting with about 10 Korean scientists within ANL to hear their opinions on local research activities and international R&D cooperation and discuss mutual cooperation plans.