New industry creation hatchery center(NICHe) is an inter-departmental institute of Tohoku University established in 1998 with the purpose to develop regional enterprises from laboratory breakthroughs in collaboration with industry. Projects initiated with NICHe emphasize economic value and innovation in developing products, processes and manufacturing techniques.
Facilities
NICHe has three reseach buildings on the Aobayama Campus of Tohoku University as described below.
New Industry Creation Hatchery CenterMain building
- OUTLINE
- NICHe’s center (6 stories, 4,600m2) is built for establishing joint industry-university research:
Floor(1F):Planning & Development/Administration
Floor(2F):Enterprise Partnerships
Tohoku Techno Arch Corporation (TLO)
Floors(3F-6F):Joint Industry-university research
Entry and exit to each floor are monitored 24 hours per day to ensure secure research settings. - FEATURES
- The Head Office of Enterprise Partnerships and Tohoku Techno Arch Corporation(TLO) is located on the second floor along with Tohoku University Collaboration Business Incubator(T-Biz) to provide a centralized facility for Industry-academia collaboration. Security card gates are installed on each room on the laboratory floor to control entry and exit.
Fluctuation-Free Facilityfor New Information Indusry
- OUTLINE
- NICHe Fluctuation-free Facility(6 stories, 6,400m2) was constructed to bring about a leap forward in technological advances (fluctuation-free power, vibration, contaminant control) for Japan’s semiconductor and flat panel display field. The creation of this facility was supported by industry for the “New Semiconductor / Display Industry Project” developed by Tohoku University.
- FEATURES
- NICHe Fluctuation-free Facility offers ultra fine processing and high precision measurements on a nano-meter level, control of variants such as detection of contamination, monitoring power-supply voltage fluctuations and just about any other types of fluctuations such as power or vibrations, while maintaining energy conservation measures. This facility is available for use from planning, designing and manufaturing and for conducting tests with a uniform basis. There are two clean rooms with clean spaces (605m2 and 692m2), faculty and conference rooms, CAD equipment, measurement and evaluation rooms as well as free space for researchers.
New Industry Creation Hatchery CenterAnnex
- OUTLINE
- NICHe Annex was constructed by a grant from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry under the title of the “2008 Grant for Public Facilities for Promoting the Attraction of Enterprises to Regions”. To put the outcomes of research into practical use quickly, researchers are engaged in activities in collaboration with parties from large companies and small to medium-sized enterprises(SMEs), especially for domestic SMEs aiming to be global NICHe players.
- FEATURES
- NICHe Annex(5 stories, 3,500m2) houses large-scale research activities with each floor(446m2) having no partitions. Partitions can be erected according to space requirements. Entry and exit management are thoroughly maintained by keeping electronic records to ensure security and to prevent unauthorized entry or loss of information.
