As part of the IAC's strategic plan, since 2019, the Electronic Department of the Instrumentation Division has been carrying out many activities to obtain the necessary capabilities for designing and testing integrated circuits (ICs) for astrophysical instrumentation with different microelectronic and integrated photonic technologies. In 2022, said work, supported by diverse financial sources, allowed the creation and launch of the Laboratory of Integrated Circuits (LABIC) in the Electronic Department of the Instrumentation Division at the IAC. LABIC is a facility devoted to the design, packaging and measuring of integrated circuits with diverse tecnologies.

Since the launch of LABIC, several activities related to the design and testing of integrated circuits (microelectronics and integrated photonics) have been carried out, including the integration of the IAC in the European Consortium EUROPRACTICE, in the Spanish Association of Semiconductors (AESEMI) and in the CanaryCHIP ecosystem; establishing collaborations with other research centres and companies for developing elements for astrophysical instrumentation with microelectronics and integrated photonics; publishing scientific results; and the continuos improvement of the capabilities with the support of various financial sources (Plan Nacional de Infraestructuras; Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia; Misiones; Planes de Actuación; etc.). Directly related to this new capability, students are benefiting through summer scholarships, external internships, vocational training internships, ICEX Vives Scholarships (company internships), bachelor theses, master theses and doctoral theses.

hugo.garciavazquez [at] iac.es (Contact)