The Challenges of Microelectronics for the Future Digital Society: The Roles of Thin Film Technologies and of the Higher Education

The new digital society is based on Internet of Things (IoT) and related connected objects are becoming more prevalent around the world. This evolution implies innovation in many areas of technology, the heart of which is microelectronics. Connected objects involve many technological components and functions that are directly dependent of the microelectronics capabilities. If the perspectives are exciting, several challenges are appearing. The first is related to the energy consumption of all these objects, which will become enormous by 2030, and unrealistic by 2040. The second is human resources concern. The future engineers and PhD will have many obstacles to overcome. A way to face these challenges is to involve more and more new thin film technologies that must be combined with VLSI ones, and to better train students to this domain with enough know-how and with a large spectrum of knowledge suitable for multidisciplinary applications. The French national network for Higher Education in microelectronics has adopted this strategy. After presentation of the challenges, this paper deals with the innovative activities of the French network focused on thin film technologies, in order to face the challenges in a short future.