Microelectronics has been a prominent field for several decades since the introduction of the world's first transistor at Bell Laboratories in 1947. Over the years, significant progress has been made in microelectronics, including the development of the Integrated Circuit (IC), advancements in microfabrication processes, and the utilization of these technologies in the fabrication of semiconductor and other advanced small-scale devices. As the world embraces the era of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0), the importance of the semiconductor supply chain industry in driving this revolutionary transformation becomes increasingly crucial. Malaysia has also been actively striving to keep pace with the everevolving microelectronics and semiconductor industry by fostering collaboration between relevant industries, government, and higher education institutions. This talk aims to explore the semiconductor supply chain within Malaysia and the role of higher institutions in fulfilling the nation's aspiration to produce more sophisticated engineers and technologists.

Advanced packaging has been rapidly growing in recent years, driven by the increasing demand in high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving. It is getting traction from semiconductor industry as more than Moore solution to enhance system performance to enable higher device performance, increase bandwidth, offer lower latency, and lower power consumption. This keynote will give an overview of the market and technology trend in the advanced packaging. Other than that, the presentation will highlight the emerging trend of chiplet and how it drives the advanced packaging to attain heterogeneous integration. Advanced packaging players and their innovation direction and commercial product will be briefly discussed. Last, the presentation will highlight important of IC substrate in advanced packaging supply chain of semiconductor.

Renewable energy has been the center of attention in sustainable energy research for the past decade, as it is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations. It supports SDG 7: affordable and clean energy, SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities, and SDG 13: climate action. Among the renewable energy sources, thermoelectric energy (TE) harvester stands out as a clean and environmental friendly energy source as it directly converts waste heat into electrical energy. Upon successful implementation, TE harvester would greatly reduce world's dependency on fossil fuel, promotes clean energy conversion and supply for domestic and industrial use, while reducing global carbon footprint and greenhouse effect. In this context, our prototype increases the thermoelectric conversion efficiency of a TE harvester by infusing graphene nanoballs into bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) thermoelectric generator (TEG). The graphene nanoballs increase the total ZT value of the Bi2Te3/graphene nanoballs composite, resulting in a better performance TEG. In our laboratory prototype, the ZT value increased by 22.7%, which plausibly increases TEG efficiency from the typical 8% to 11%, thus pushing this Bi2Te3/graphene nanoballs TEG into a commercially viable product.