Director's message

Welcome to the website of the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM)!

With this message we want to transmit you the passion and the work that we carry out in the center, where we are almost 200 people dedicated to the science of small and very small things, micro and nanotechnology. We want to carry out a research that is close to society and helps to contribute to the challenges of the present and the future.

The Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB) is one of the approximately 120 institutes of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and together with the nodes in Seville and Madrid, we form the National Microelectronics Centre (CNM). We are a part of the Campus of International Excellence of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), that is a cluster of scientific activity. We are a public institution that carries out intensive research in technology, and our vocation is focused on the exploitation of micro and nanotechnologies for the development of devices that contribute to the digitization of multiple applications of socioeconomic interest, such as energy, industry, mobility, environment, agri-food, security, space, and health and welfare, among others.

Two aspects of these technologies are their miniaturization capacity, which opens the door to their integration in different use cases, and their economy of scale, which makes it possible to manufacture many devices at a low unit cost. This can be achieved both with silicon technologies and printed electronics, and with the help of well-established materials such as silicon itself (the undisputed protagonist of the microelectronics revolution) or with other emerging materials such as wide bandgap semiconductors, graphene or organic materials.

At IMB-CNM these technologies and materials come together in a flexible way in a unique manufacturing environment: the Micro- and Nanofabrication Clean Room, recognised at Spanish level as a Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS).

Our technological capacity, the quality of the infrastructure that supports it and our research experience make the IMB-CNM a vibrant research environment, ideal for training and entirely open to collaboration with other research groups and companies. These ingredients, together with our will to contribute effectively to society, give rise to the wide range of our activities, be it frontier applied research (materialized in ERC proposals and high impact publications), participation in national and international collaborative R&D&I projects, or the application of our results in commercial products or in scenarios as broad and demanding as the interior of cells, the cerebral cortex to capture neuronal signals, the CERN collider or on board space missions.

You will find us here to explain or collaborate with you in this adventure of knowledge and innovation.

Luis Fonseca (on behalf of IMB-CNM).