Entegris Inc., a Billerica-based materials and solutions provider to the microelectronics industries, today inaugurated its new i2M Center for Advanced Materials Science (“The i2M Center”) in Bedford, Massachusetts. The facility is the company’s flagship innovation center for developing filtration and specialty coatings technologies, which are used to maximize production yields in the world’s most demanding and challenging microelectronics manufacturing environments.

Representing an investment of more than $55 million, the i2M Center will focus on R&D and manufacturing for filtration media, metal membranes, electrostatic clamps (E-Chucks) and proprietary advanced, low-temperature coatings.

“i2M stands for ‘ideas to market’ and we intend for this facility to be our flagship innovation center for solving very difficult materials science challenges,” Bertrand Loy, President and CEO of Entegris, said. “Our customers run extremely complex manufacturing processes and the i2M Center reflects our commitment to developing truly innovative solutions to support their process advancements. As a global company serving global customers, we evaluated a number of locations for this new building. We chose Massachusetts because it is at the epicenter of some of the best engineering talent in the world.”

Approximately 100 professionals will work at i2M Center, many of whom hold doctorates and advanced degrees in material/separation science and chemical engineering. Entegris has approximately 350 employees in Massachusetts and approximately 3,500 employees worldwide.

Entegris reported on April 30, 2014 that it completed the acquisition of Danbury-based ATMI for $1.1 billion.