The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s CHIPS Program Office has finalized the definition of material expansion in a rule aimed at preventing the improper use of federal funding for semiconductor manufacturing.
The final rule clarifies the scope of material expansion to include existing as well as new semiconductor production facilities with a capacity increase of more than 5 percent, according to the CHIPS Program Office’s notice on Federal Register.
The agency initially issued a request for comment in March about the definition of terms in the Preventing the Improper Use of CHIPS Act Funding. The rule has a provision on expansion clawback, which prohibits significant manufacturing capacity material expansion by U.S. entities in foreign countries.
In the polished definition, material expansion was clarified to cover newly constructed chip facilities. The agency reiterated the term as the “increase of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity of an existing facility by more than five percent of the capacity memorialized in the required agreement due to the addition of a cleanroom, production line or other physical space, or a series of such additions.”