Fifteen startups, under the support of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), joined the Taiwan contingent to showcase their innovative technologies. The 15 startup teams include 11 from technology research institutions and four startup companies, showcasing technology areas in semiconductor and communications, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and biotechnology.
MOEA is dedicated to the facilitation of industrial technology development. In 2021, the Department of Industrial Technology launched the Taiwan Research-Institute Entrepreneur Ecosystem Program to encourage startup ventures among the technology development teams. After a series of coaching and competitions, 15 teams are selected to put their technology innovation into commercialisation and to create higher industrial value and momentum for Taiwan.
Taiwan is the leading supplier of global semiconductor chips. To respond to the fast evolution of semiconductor chip manufacturing and its stringent clean environment requirement, technologies needed to support semiconductor manufacturing account for a significant portion of advanced technology research in Taiwan.
With its proprietary technologies, a startup company has developed a tool capable of accurately and efficiently detecting the most crucial size and population of the liquid-borne sub-20nm nanoparticles by using aerosol technology. The company’s extremely precise tool monitors impurities in liquid chemicals used in semiconductor chip fabrication to ensure high production yield. It has been proven to be highly effective in enhancing wafer yields and improving the quality of liquid chemicals.
Another startup team has developed a measuring tool that can measure multilayer GAA (Gate-All-Around) structure and monitor critical dimensions with atomic-level resolution in the 2nm semiconductor front-end process. According to the team, the tool will reduce measurement time by 90% compared with current tools on the market.
Taking its technology in measuring the thickness of steel sheets as the basis, a startup team has developed a dynamic laser detection module that measures the thickness of semiconductor wafers with micron meter (μm) accuracy. The high-precision detection ensures super high uniformity of wafers before being put into the process line. The highly stable module can even measure material in the production line in a high-speed roll-to-roll operation.
Aside from maintaining an excellent higher education system that echoes the talent needs of its industry, Taiwan is fanning out its research focus beyond the manufacturing sector. Software companies with innovative ideas, applications, or solutions easily find their soil to grow in Taiwan.
The crowd-sourcing platform has created a marketplace where enterprises can put their issues open and call for solutions after evaluation and topic design are done through artificial intelligence. The platform has accumulated 12,000 AI talents worldwide with 50 industry cases being publicly solved.
Another startup has developed smart glasses with hybrid computer vision, spatial intelligence and voice recognition technologies that can recognize a commodity and estimate its quantity. Besides having a wide range of industrial applications, the hands-free human-machine interactive smart inventory solution reduces the risk of human performance instability and increases inventory accuracy.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, MOST announced that 20 tech startup companies would showcase Taiwan’s Biotech capabilities to the world connect with the global ecosystem, resources and industries in the forum organised by Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA). There are 20 TTA startup teams are selected by industrial experts and focused on global bio-industrial market potential startups.
Taiwan has demonstrated how to democratically tackle the COVID-19 threatening and how to be a truly global partner by utilising technologies. Taiwan’s efforts and commitments have drawn international attention and the relationship between Taiwan and the U.S. has become stronger than ever before in the past year.
By working together, Taiwan can speed up the transition from scientific findings into practical technology applications and create a win-win situation and achieve future possible collaborations in the US. The companies presented disruptive biotech innovations such as vocal implant systems, AI Video-based telemedicine solutions and detection of respiratory function with ultrasound technology.
