CEA and STMicro collaborate

The two companies will establish a common laboratory in Tours and Grenoble, France. ST, which has a major manufacturing facility in Tours, and CEA Liten (Laboratory of Innovation for New Energy Technologies and Nanomaterials), a research laboratory of CEA based in Grenoble, France, will collaborate on a four-year program to develop new miniaturized technologies for energy solutions with a particular emphasis on powering mobile phones, laptop computers and other portable electronic products. The collaboration will involve more than fifty researchers, distributed approximately between sites in Grenoble and Tours. “We have a long experience in working with ST, including successful previous collaborations with its Tours teams in this field. We know the strength of their expertise, which was a factor in making us decide to set up a common lab between Tours and Grenoble", said Jean Therme, director of the Technological Research Division at the CEA. “The manufacturing know-how of ST will be an important asset in the industrialization of the new technologies we will develop." The joint research team will work on a variety of projects. These include micro-fuel cells specifically designed to power mobile phones using fuel that can be topped up at any time, thin-film microbatteries for use in applications such as “smart labels", which are expected to replace existing barcode technology, and Radio-Frequency ID tags, and the development of new energy scavenging technologies.