Crocus Nano Electronics (CNE), a joint venture founded in 2011 by Russian state-owned nanotechnology giant Rusnano and France-based Crocus Technology, yesterday announced that it has raised $60m in additional capital from its existing investors.
The new funding will enable CNE to “finalise construction and installation works, complete procurement and installation of all capital equipment to support factory operations; and accelerate the Crocus Generation 3 Technology transfer through the end of 2014,” the company stated.
“With this new capital, we are now fully funded to deliver the last key milestone in the implementation of Russia’s first ever 300 millimetre fab,” said Mark Dydyk, CEO of CNE.
Last week, CNE’s full board of directors toured their state-of-the-art semiconductor factory in Technopolis Moscow. Launched in October last year, this semiconductor factory is the very first in Russia to use 300mm diameter wafer for magnetoresistive (MRAM) random access memory manufacturing.
Currently, 200mm and 300mm complementary metal oxide semiconductor wafers can be deposited with magnetic layers to create memory cells. CNE is ramping up with the objective to turn out 500 wafers per week by the end of 2014.
The future products of the Russo-French project, based on MRAM and a proprietary technology called Magnetic Logic Unit, which Crocus Technology has developed in collaboration with IBM, could be used in smart cards, network switching systems, biometric identification devices, near-field communications-based communicators, and in secure memory.
This article first appeared in East-West Digital News, the international online resource on Russian digital industries.