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Sony Electronics Inc. has donated about $2 million worth of equipment from its local microchip plant to the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).
UTSA intends to use the equipment to set up its own micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS, facility at its Loop 1604 campus. The new MEMS facility will be used as a teaching aid and to conduct research.
MEMS are silicon-based computer chips with tiny mechanical or electrical systems built into them.
Sony, which is in the process of shutting down its microchip plant in the Alamo City, agreed to donate some equipment used to produce MEMS chips as a way of giving something back to the community, says Arturo Ayon, formerly an employee of Sony and now a professor of electrical engineering at UTSA.
Ayon was hired by the university, in part, to shepherd the new equipment and to help set up a MEMS operation at the university. The school is planning to build a 5,000-square-foot laboratory for the MEMS program next to its laser lab and its power dynamics lab. Groundbreaking for the facility is expected to take place toward the end of July with substantial completion of the...