The goal of the MaxCaps research project is to develop methods for integrating capacitors on silicon chips, thus reducing the number of discrete capacitors currently mounted on printed circuit boards (PCB) by up to 30%. Depending on the application, the space required by PCB-mounted discrete capacitors could be cut by about a half.

Furthermore, chip-integrated capacitors enhance the overall reliability of electronic systems due to the smaller number of soldered connections on the board. It is particularly those applications where it is important to save space that stand to gain from the smaller board dimensions. This applies equally to electronic control units in cars and to mobile devices such as mobile phones.

The findings of the MaxCaps research activities, which will continue until August 2011, will form the basis for integrating high-capacity capacitors on silicon chips. Currently, capacitors must be board-mounted as separate discrete components with correspondingly high space requirements.

The project partners are therefore looking for alternatives to the silicon dioxide and silicon nitride materials currently used as dielectrics in chip manufacturing. MaxCaps targets at the development of new isolating materials with a high dielectric constant of at least 50 and the associated deposition processes.

Companies, universities and research facilities in Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Finland, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands are working on the MaxCaps project within the framework of the European MEDEA+ Program and the IKT 2020 Program of the German Federal Government.

MaxCaps project partners
The 17 research partners are makers of chemicals and deposition equipment, semiconductor manufacturers, system suppliers to the automotive industry, research institutes, and universities:

- Air Liquide (France)
- Aixtron (Germany)
- Analog Devices (Ireland)
- ASMI (Belgium, France, Finland)
- Bronkhorst High-Tech B.V. (Netherlands)
- CEA-LETI (France)
- Continental (Germany)
- IHP - Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics / Leibniz Institut fuer innovative Mikroelektronik (Germany)
- IMEC (Belgium)
- Infineon Technologies (Germany)
- NXP (Netherlands, Belgium)
- Oxford Instruments (UK)
- R3T (Germany)
- SAFC Hightech (UK)
- STMicroelectronics (France)
- Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands)
- Tyndall National Institute (Ireland)
- University of Helsinki (Finland).