Rarely does a major spending bill in Washington draw bipartisan support and yield immediate results. Behold the CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden Aug. 9. The act provides more than $52 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the U.S.

Geopolitical forces are accelerating the growing trends of reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI). Over the last decade, an expanding understanding of the routine logistics costs of offshoring drove an upward trend of reshoring.

KAOHSIUNG CITY, Taiwan—ASE Technology Holding Co. Ltd., one of the world’s largest semiconductor testing and packaging firms, plans to build a highly advanced smart factory here, as the industry grapples with a labor shortage.

They achieve this by removing residual organic metal-binding ligands from the transition metal oxide thin films, enhancing device stability and performance.

NEW BRAUNFELS, TX—Continental has officially opened a new, $110 million assembly plant here. The factory is expected to employ more than 500 people.

DURHAM, NC—Wolfspeed Inc. will build a state-of-the-art, multi-billion-dollar factory in Chatham County, North Carolina, to produce wide-bandgap semiconductors made from silicon carbide. The new factory will increase the company’s manufacturing capacity by more than 10 fold.

BOISE, ID—Micron Technology Inc. plans to invest approximately $15 billion through the end of the decade to construct a new factory here to make memory chips. This will be the first new memory manufacturing fab built in the U.S. in 20 years, ensuring a domestic supply of memory chips required for automobiles, data centers and other applications.

BATESVILLE, IN—IKIO LED Lighting LLC is planning to build a new assembly plant and warehouse facility here.

Thanks to their strength, corrosion resistance and formability, carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) are increasingly being used for automotive and aerospace structures. Adhesives are ideal for assembling CFRP. 

Based in Genoa, Italy, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) is one of the best research centers throughout all of Europe. Researchers there focus on several specialties, including robotics, computer vision and optical microscopy.