It is a dream come true, Robert-Jan Smits, TU/e college president, told this morning at the signing of the memorandum of understanding, in which the university and ASML agree to jointly develop a 10-year strategic research roadmap. The Veldhoven-based chip machine manufacturer is also building a new research facility on the TU/e campus, including setting up a state-of-the-art clean room, to be there by the end of 2025.
In the main photo from left to right: Frank Schuurmans, Vice President Research at ASML, College President Robert-Jan Smits and Jos Benschop, Vice President Technology at ASML.
"With the signing of this memorandum, TU/e and ASML are sealing their good cooperation of the past years, but we are going one step further," Smits told the University Club this morning, where the memorandum was signed in the presence of a group of ASML employees and TU/e deans and professors. With the latter, Smits was referring to ASML's planned construction of a research facility on the TU/e site, which will also include a state-of-the-art clean room. This was reported by Cursor early this month.
That new facility will also have shared workspaces, meeting rooms and research laboratories, and the university is now in the process of granting a long-term lease for it on campus. Completion is scheduled for late 2025. Exactly where the facility will be built will be announced in the near future, according to Dorine Peters, director of Real Estate. In any case, in the immediate vicinity of the Flux building on the east side of the site.
Close cooperation
In that facility, ASML researchers will soon carry out their own research, but also research that takes place in close cooperation with TU/e scientists and PhD students. The TU/e will also rent part of the facility from ASML, which will then accommodate other TU/e research requiring a clean room. Other research centres and industrial partners will also be able to use it. Smits: "So it will not be a compound within a compound, as you sometimes see elsewhere, but a place where research is also emphatically carried out jointly. Good for our researchers, but certainly also for our students, who will thus already come into contact with ASML researchers during their studies, from whom they can learn a lot." ASML staff will play a role as hybrid teachers and coaches, according to Smits.
The joint cleanroom space will enable growth and synergy between academic research areas of mutual interest, such as photonics, quantum, nanomaterials and chip manufacturing. The realisation of the proposed facility involves an estimated investment of several hundred million euros. The new facility is planned to accommodate more than 500 researchers, including several hundred ASML employees.
The 10-year strategic roadmap that ASML and TU/e will develop together will focus on plasma physics, artificial intelligence, mechatronics and semiconductor lithography. Both parties will invest "substantially and equally in this," according to the press release. Up to 40 PhD positions will be created annually in that new programme, 'for which TU/e will recruit internationally renowned top scientific talent'.
Scale up
After Smits, Jos Benschop, Corporate Vice President Technology at ASML, took the floor. "Outside it is raining, but here inside the sun is shining today," he said. "Our relationship with TU/e goes back to the early days of ASML. Our collaboration is based on a shared commitment to creating meaningful innovations for society by bridging the gap between fundamental science and industrial engineering. This next step in our partnership is shaping a brighter future for the Brainport region. Wonderful things will happen here and we as ASML feel very welcome on the TU/e campus."
Smits concurred and said he expects the arrival of the new facility and further cooperation to make a substantial contribution to the increase in scale the Brainport region wants to make in the coming years, as well as the leap in scale the university itself wants to make to meet the growing demand from the region for highly skilled engineers. The latter requires financial support from The Hague and Smits said he had had a conversation about this with the cabinet in March, "but to no avail. We will talk again in June and hopefully a better result will come out of that."
