Samsung joins $5 Billion EPIC Center for semiconductor R&D leadership, Aiming to Advance Sub-2nm Processes, AI Chip Efficiency

Samsung Electronics will participate as a founding member in the ‘EPIC Center,’ a next-generation joint research and development hub of Applied Materials, the world’s leading semiconductor equipment company. Samsung Electronics’ decision to engage in joint development with an equipment maker from the early research stage is interpreted as a strategic collaboration aimed at securing leadership in sub-2-nanometer ultra-fine processes and artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors.

Park Kwang-sun, President of Applied Materials Korea, stated at a press conference on Feb. 12, “Samsung has joined as a funding member of the Silicon Valley EPIC Center,” adding, “We will accelerate technological innovation through collaboration with customers.” He explained that this is not a simple partnership but a structure in which both parties invest funds together and pursue joint research.

The ‘EPIC Center’ is the world’s largest semiconductor joint research and development facility, with Applied Materials investing $5 billion. Chip manufacturers, universities, and equipment makers will jointly research next-generation processes and materials in a single space. The plan is to pursue parallel development with mass production in mind from the early research stage, thereby shortening the time required to complete the technology.

Such collaboration has emerged because the difficulty of ultra-fine processes has increased significantly. In particular, as power efficiency has emerged as a key metric due to the expansion of AI data centers, technology that precisely controls materials at the atomic level has become a variable that determines competitiveness. The diagnosis is that the bottleneck in miniaturization is occurring not in design but in the areas of materials and equipment.

The two companies will strengthen cooperation centered on advanced node miniaturization, next-generation memory structures, and three-dimensional stacking technology. The strategy is to move away from the existing approach of developing processes in separate stages and instead simultaneously advance key stages to improve both performance and cost.

Jeon Young-hyun, Vice Chairman and Head of Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) Division, emphasized, “The two companies have advanced cutting-edge equipment technology based on a long-standing partnership,” adding, “I expect that technological cooperation will be further strengthened through the EPIC Center.”

On this day, Applied also unveiled three new equipment types to be applied to sub-2-nanometer processes. The ‘Producer Viva Radical Processing System’ is equipment that precisely controls the surface of nanosheets, which are the core of the Gate-All-Around (GAA) structure, at the angstrom* level. It focuses on improving surface uniformity, which determines transistor performance. An angstrom is a unit of length. One angstrom is 0.1 nanometers, and the diameter of a single atom is approximately at the angstrom level.

The ‘Sym3 Z Magnum’ etching system is equipment that precisely controls ions at the microsecond level to etch semiconductor surfaces. It is used to realize desired shapes without error in sub-2-nanometer processes, which require stacking structures layer by layer that are much thinner than a human hair. The key is to stably create fine three-dimensional structures.

For interconnect processes, the company introduced the ‘Centris Spectral’ molybdenum ALD system. This method applies molybdenum instead of conventional tungsten to the pathways through which electricity flows inside semiconductors. This is said to reduce resistance generated when electricity passes through by up to 15%. When resistance is lowered, power consumption decreases even when performing the same computations. This technology is directly linked to improving the energy efficiency of AI chips such as High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

Applied is also making parallel investments in Korea. The ‘Applied Collaboration Center Korea’ under construction in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, is a technology collaboration hub in which customers, partners, and universities participate together.