News: Optoelectronics
20 January 2025
US CHIPS Incentives Program awards finalized for Corning, Edwards Vacuum and Infinera
Under the CHIPS Incentives Program’s Funding Opportunity for Commercial Fabrication Facilities, the US Department of Commerce has finalized three separate awards of direct funding: up to $32m for Corning, up to $18m for Edwards Vacuum, and up to $93m for Infinera. The awards come after the previously signed preliminary memoranda of terms, announced on 8 November, 10 October and 17 October 2024, respectively, and the completion of the Department’s due diligence. The Department will disburse the funds based on the companies’ completion of project milestones.
The awards support the following projects:
- Corning (Canton, New York): Up to $32m will enable Corning, one of the largest industrial employers in New York’s North Country region, to increase production of Corning HPFS (high-purity fused silica) and EXTREME ULE Glass (Ultra Low Expansion Glass) and scale a novel technology manufacturing process in Canton. HFPS and ULE materials are key components of deep ultraviolet (DUV) and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines and photomasks, and this new technology would improve EUV performance with a lower carbon footprint. The investment in Corning will enable a reliable domestic supply of these important components in the USA and is expected to help to advance US technology leadership in the lithography supply chain. The project should create 130 manufacturing jobs and over 175 construction jobs. Corning’s project will also be supported by a commitment of up to $7m by Empire State Development in performance-based Excelsior Jobs Program funding to support the building of computer chips.
- Edwards Vacuum (Genessee County, New York): Up to $18m will support the construction of a greenfield manufacturing facility in Genesee County, New York and will produce dry vacuum pumps, creating up to 100 construction jobs and 500 production jobs. The investment will help to create a reliable domestic supply of important equipment for semiconductor manufacturing and is a step towards strengthening US economic and national security, as there is currently no domestic production of semiconductor-grade dry vacuum pumps, which are essential for both advanced and legacy semiconductor fabrication.
- Infinera (San Jose, California; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania): Up to $93m will support the construction of a new fab in San Jose, California, and a new advanced test & packaging facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which should increase Infinera’s existing domestic manufacturing capacity by an estimated factor of 10. Infinera is a vertically integrated photonic semiconductor and telecoms equipment manufacturer that has operated its US fabrication and advanced test & packaging facilities for over 20 years. As the USA becomes more reliant on larger amounts of data driving increased energy usage, Infinera’s indium phosphide-based photonic integrated circuits (InP PICs) are increasingly important. The PICs and optical modules are key components in optical network communications and enable the fast, reliable transfer of large amounts of data communications, spanning short- to long-distance broadband networks connecting cities, countries and continents; between data centers; and between artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) clusters inside the data center. This investment will create about 500 manufacturing jobs and 1200 construction jobs.
“We have finalized the agreement to receive CHIPS Act funding to increase photonic semiconductor fabrication and packaging in the US and help protect our national security by enabling us to better compete with foreign adversary nations,” says Infinera’s CEO David Heard. “This funding will accelerate delivery of US photonic semiconductor innovations to meet the demands of critical network infrastructure in the era of AI.”
In addition, the Department of Commerce has amended the previously announced award to provide a supplemental award of up to $75m in direct funding to GlobalFoundries, to support the expansion of its existing facility in Malta, New York, to provide first-of-its-kind advanced packaging technology and enable for a fully integrated pure-play foundry wafer manufacturing and advanced packaging process flow in the USA. The firm’s expanded capabilities will focus on the packaging of photonic integrated circuits, which will enable faster networking and communications to support AI and high-performance compute end-markets, in addition to chiplet integration and wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding. Through the company’s partnership with the US Department of Defense, the investment will establish domestic capability for an end-to-end trusted process flow to meet US national security needs.
GlobalFoundries’ $1.5bn US CHIPS Act funding confirmed by Department of Commerce
