A new national fab for gallium nitride, a vital futuristic but hard to procure semiconductor material, is in the offing, spearheaded by Indian Institute of Science.
The fab will enable creation of reliable, India-specific integrated circuits for electronic devices that go into civil and strategic uses, including by departments of Space, Atomic Energy and Defence, according to key scientists involved in the Rs. 30-crore, six-year-old project to develop the material.
IISc’s Centre for Nanoscience & Engineering may house pilot activities while a separate location along with an industry partner is being considered. “It can be a game changer for the country. We won’t have to depend on others for making the devices,” material scientist R. Muralidharan, who was until April Director of the DRDO’s Solid State Physics Laboratory, New Delhi, told
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R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Adviser to Govt. of India, chaired the session on ‘Nano science and engineering’ at the IISc alumni meet.