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  • WHERE I WORK

I helped to build Taiwan’s Silicon Valley

Miin Wu, whose company, Macronix International, has played a seminal part in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, explains why dust and vibration pose enormous challenges for running his factory.
  1. Margaret Simons

    1. Margaret Simons is an Australian journalist based in Melbourne.

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Portrait of Dr Miin Wu, 71, CEO of Macronix, in a showroom at company headquarters, Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Miin Wu is founding chairman and chief executive of Macronix International in Taiwan. Credit: Dave Tacon for Nature

In this picture from last December, I am in the showroom of the Macronix factory in Hsinchu Science Park — Taiwan’s version of California’s Silicon Valley. I can’t show you the clean fabrication rooms because semiconductor manufacturing is so delicate that I can’t allow a photographer in there. Contamination on the surface of the wafers — which become part of the microchips that we use in electronic devices — will damage their performance.

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Nature 617, 216 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01468-1

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