Soitec and CEA have renewed their partnership for the next five years. This new contract aims to support Soitec’s strategy for the electronics, solar energy and lighting markets. It will focus on engineered substrates and materials offering higher performances and energy savings at a competitive cost.

As the new partnership is putting in place a powerful R&D ecosystem, time from research to product will be considerably reduced. Thanks to the strengths of CEA-Leti in electronic materials, multi-domain research and its pre-industrialization infrastructure, competitive R&D sample prototyping will be enabled thru a common platform, reducing time to market and R&D costs for Soitec and its customers.

The CEA-Leti and Soitec teams will focus their efforts on developing new materials generations to support Soitec road maps in three markets (electronics, solar energy and lighting). To do so, they will leverage the CEA-Leti and Soitec expertise and will use Smart Cut(TM) technology and extended tool box as key assets to support the next generations of mobile devices, solar cells and LEDs.

Dr. Carlos Mazure, CTO of Soitec, emphasized: “in our industry, competitive pre-industrialization research, development of technology and product prototypes have become very important to make the difference. The CEA-Leti and Soitec partnership establishes a powerful alliance that is capable of answering the numerous challenges of today’s industrial requirements and building on our well-established material expertise.”

“The agreement aims at accelerating exploratory research as well as technology innovation to prepare the products of tomorrow,” he added. “It complements the Soitec strategy of entering new markets with high-efficiency concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology, high-intensity LEDs for lighting applications and engineered substrates for electronic applications.”

Laurent Malier, Director of CEA-Leti, also commented on the partnership renewal, saying, “In recent years, Soitec has widely expanded its footprint and impact by addressing the electronics and energy challenges through its unique technologies which we developed together. Our partnership is the most efficient framework for securing research execution to support the ambitions of Soitec, and CEA-Leti teams are committed to its success.”