The first step towards the Digital Hardware Hub Aachen is taken - It’s time to celebrate!

AMO GmbH is very pleased to announce the approval of the first sub-project “DigiHub-IT” of the wider ‘Digital Hardware Hub Aachen’ project – a major initiative that will shape the future of AMO in the next decades.

More than a project, the Digital Hardware Hub Aachen is a vision: to establish a central infrastructure for micro- and nanotechnology able to support the economic ecosystem around innovative hardware in the Rhenish mining area. The starting point is the existing infrastructure and expertise of AMO GmbH, which is going to be significantly expanded through the construction of a new building with a new cleanroom, as well as office and laboratory space. The Hub will offer room not only to AMO but, above all, to start-ups in the deep-tech sector that need access to a first-class technology infrastructure.

The realization of the Digital Hardware Hub Aachen is one of the measures supported by the State of North-Rhine Westphalia and the German Federal Government to sustain the transformation of the Rhenish mining area during the phasing out of lignite. In total, the project should receive around €47 millions of structural strengthening funds, divided in three sub-projects. AMO has now received the approval of funding for the first sub-project, the “DigiHub-IT”, which will provide €1,8 million for investments in IT infrastructure. The other two sub-projects will cover the planning and the construction of the new building, respectively.

Most importantly, the approval of the “DigiHub-IT” represents the official kick-off of the process that will bring to the realization of the Digital Hardware Hub Aachen. The whole AMO team has celebrated the event on Wednesday, 28 August, together with the colleagues of the Chair of Electronic Devices (ELD) at RWTH and a number of friends and partners. “What we celebrate today are essentially the next 30+ years of AMO,” said Prof. Max Lemme in a short opening speech. “The approval of the DigiHub initiates the process to build AMO 2.0 – the Digital Hardware Hub”.

“We get asked, sometimes, whether the Digital Hardware Hub should be something like the Digital Church that we have here in Aachen,” added Lemme, referring to the digitalHUB Aachen, the communication and coworking space for digital start-ups and SMEs realized in the former church of St. Elisabeth, in Jülicherstraße. “The answer is partly yes. But it should be the deep-tech, hardware version of it.”

“The digitalHUB is a place where start-ups and entrepreneurs and innovative people get together to innovate and create, mostly, software solutions. But I am convinced that the future also needs hardware. We need novel computer chips, batteries, power electronics and environmental technologies to fight climate change. So we need hardware, and for that it takes infrastructure and it takes an environment where this deep-tech can be invented and developed. And this is what we want to build: digital-hardware hub, where experts in hardware technology can meet, discuss, and research together to create the technological solutions of tomorrow,” explained Lemme.

The Digital Hardware Hub Aachen is going to be a flagship project to support and expand value creation in the fields of micro- and nanotechnology in the Rhenish mining region. Driven by the idea that nanotechnology should not be developed as a stand-alone future technology but rather transferred into a broad range of innovations, the Hub will serve as a permanent incubation center – identifying potential applications at an early stage, addressing them through targeted research projects, and then transferring this know-how to regional companies and start-ups. In doing so, the Digital Hardware Hub Aachen will play a continuous role in establishing and maintaining future-relevant topics in the Rhenish mining area, developing new technologies for market-ready applications, and thus creating new, sustainable jobs and opportunities in the region.

The Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Mona Neubaur says: “Small scale, big impact: the Digital Hardware Hub Aachen project shows that the future is happening in the Rhenish mining area. Here there are important innovations for future-proof jobs that create technological progress and develop highly innovative products. The project can also contribute beyond the region to designing climate-neutral products and processes using nanotechnology – so that the energy transition succeeds, autonomous mobility becomes a reality and the digital transformation continues to make progress. With such pioneering key technologies, we will take another important step towards becoming a climate-neutral and high-tech industrial region in Europe.”

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