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Cabinet to increase nanotech funding

By the numbers * Over the next six years, the government hopes to give NT$23.17 billion toward nanotechnology research. * China, by comparison, is planning to spend NT$105.7 billion (US$3 billion) by 2005. * South Korea, Taiwan's nearest competitor in terms of development, plans to spend NT$54.28 billion (US$1.56 billion) this year. * The government's allocations will go to groups such as Industrial Technology Research Institute and National Taiwan University.

Rising nanotechnology research budgets among Taiwan's top competitors, including China and South Korea, has prompted the Cabinet to seek more funding for the fledgling sector, officials said yesterday.

The Executive Yuan increased the amount of nanotechnology research funding it will request from the legislature to NT$23.17 billion (US$665.8 million) over the next six years, up 20.68 percent from an original estimate of NT$19.2 billion.

"The proposal has not yet formally passed the legislature, but that is the new figure," said an official at the National Science Council, the government bureau in charge of developing the nation's nanotech plan.

The official, who declined to be named, cited growing commercial requests for funding on a variety of research initiatives as another reason for the budget increase. The nanotech plan is expected to pass in the middle of May or in early June, she added.

China, by comparison, is planning to spend NT$105.7 billion (US$3 billion) by 2005, and South Korea, Taiwan's most comparable competitor in terms of development, has budgeted NT$54.28 billion (US$1.56 billion) for nanotechnology research for this year alone.

The funds will be used to develop new materials and products by manipulating them at the microscopic level. A nanometer is four atoms wide, or 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Researchers in Taiwan hope to use the technology to manipulate material, such as plastic, at the nanometric level in order to make it stronger, more pliable and better to use.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院), National Taiwan University, and other research groups have already been allotted portions of the money.

Hsinchu-based ITRI has set up the Nanotechnology Research Center to help focus public and private research in the area. Symbolically, the new center will be housed in the same building where Taiwan's most famous high-tech company was born, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電).

TSMC's first semiconductor wafer fabrication plant, dubbed fab 1, was set up in a building rented from ITRI in 1985, after Taiwan had set its sights on developing a chip industry.

TSMC opted to phase out the older fab as the company moves on to newer, cutting edge chip technology. Fab 1 ceased to be a TSMC property last month.

Officials at ITRI hope the geographic placement of the old fab has enough fengshui (風水) left to kick start the nanotechnology industry here in the same manner as it did the chip industry -- and TSMC.

Taiwan's chip industry has a production value of around US$20 billion a year, and TSMC is the top breadwinner.

In one example of a product being created using nanotechnology, ITRI is working with TSMC to develop a manufacturing process for a kind of memory chip that could someday replace six other memory chips currently on the market, said Tsai Ming-jinn (蔡銘進), director of the semiconductor device technology division at ITRI's Electronics Research and Service Organization (電子工業研究所).

The chip, magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), was developed by semiconductor companies worldwide as a potential replacement for flash memory, DRAM, SRAM and other kinds of short-term memory used in products ranging from desktop computers to mobile phones, Tsai said.

Up to now, the reason MRAM has not been successful on world markets is due to the high cost of producing the chips, according to Jesse Chou (周志宏), a public relations officer at TSMC.

TSMC and ITRI plan to work together on fine-tuning a manufacturing process for MRAM. TSMC is an expert at manufacturing various kinds of semiconductors on behalf of customers who design them, an industry the company pioneered.

ITRI is currently testing different kinds of materials to build a better kind of MRAM, in addition to its teaming with TSMC on the manufacturing process, Tsai said. ITRI has been allotted nearly half of the nation's budget for nanotechnology research, or NT$10 billion.
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