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Success stories from North Rhine-Westphalia

ELEMENT 3-5 GmbH

Rethinking semiconductor manufacturing:
Semiconductors are indispensable. However, their production consumes immense amounts of electricity and gas because it requires very high temperatures. The company ELEMENT 3-5 GmbH from Baesweiler near Aachen has developed a manufacturing process that requires significantly lower temperatures and even allows for entirely new material combinations.

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The challenge

Whether it's charging devices for smartphones and electric vehicles or modern displays – semiconductors are used in a multitude of devices and applications today. They are indispensable in high-performance electronics, for example, for transforming voltages without loss. They are used billions of times worldwide. The problem: Traditional methods for manufacturing semiconductors require enormous temperatures – typically 1,200 degrees Celsius and more. This demands a high energy input and makes production both expensive and problematic in terms of resource consumption. The high costs also limit their use to high-end applications. Furthermore, since the temperature must not fluctuate during the production process, small reactors are usually used, which in turn limits production capacity – or further increases costs because more reactors are required.

Commissioned by:

  • Photos: ELEMENT 3-5 GmbH
  • Text: Lothar Schmitz, business journalist, Bonn
  • Publication: August 2025

Dr. Volker Sinhoff, CEO of ELEMENT 3-5 GmbH

“You save enormous amounts of energy, have up to ten times higher throughput, and can also produce semiconductors much more homogeneously than with conventional methods.”

The innovation

In 2010, AIXaTECH was founded in Baesweiler near Aachen as a spin-off from RWTH Aachen University. The founders developed an experimental reactor and the associated process technology, enabling the production of semiconductors at significantly lower temperatures. In 2015, Dr. Volker Sinhoff joined AIXaTECH as an investor. "I was impressed by the technology and sensed that it could one day be disruptive and the market for it enormous," says Sinhoff, who is now the managing director of the company, which has been operating as a GmbH (limited liability company) since 2022 and is called ELEMENT 3-5. Sinhoff and his team dedicated themselves to developing the technology to market readiness. Series production began in 2022. The innovative reactor is highly sought after in the semiconductor industry because it offers several advantages in the production of the semiconductor base layer: "You save enormous amounts of energy, have up to ten times the throughput, and can also produce semiconductors much more homogeneously than with conventional methods," Sinhoff lists the advantages. This is made possible by a globally patented process developed by ELEMENT 3-5, based on intelligent plasma sources that can perform tasks at temperatures as low as 200-300 degrees Celsius, tasks that would otherwise require temperatures in the thousands. However, the reactors for the base layer are just one business segment. ELEMENT 3-5 also uses an expanded version of its technology to manufacture and sell high-performance semiconductors, which are used, for example, in micro-LED displays. Thanks to the innovative manufacturing process, such displays could soon cost less than €10,000 – currently, according to Sinhoff, they cost ten to fifteen times that amount. The semiconductors from Baesweiler could also play a key role in AI chips.

The NRW effect/The location

As recently as 2022, ELEMENT 3-5 was a "garage operation," as Sinhoff recounts, with just two employees. By mid-2025, the picture is quite different: the number of employees has already reached 34, and by the end of 2025, it is projected to reach 50, with a target of 300 by 2029. Given this demand for skilled workers, the company's location in the Aachen region and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is proving advantageous. "We recruit numerous junior staff from the Aachen University of Applied Sciences and RWTH Aachen University, as well as the Jülich Research Center," says the managing director. The dense university landscape in NRW is generally very attractive. They are also very satisfied with Baesweiler, a municipality known for its business-friendly environment. This allowed the company to secure land totaling around 30,000 square meters early on for its planned expansion. Another advantage of NRW is the funding landscape. ELEMENT 3-5 is receiving ERDF funding from the state of NRW for a pilot project on the production of semiconductors for micro-LED displays, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen.

This success story of an innovative transformation was published in August 2025. No updates or reviews of the information have taken place since then.

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Transformation through innovation

Background of the publication series

The publication series “Transformation through Innovation” aims to illustrate how companies in North Rhine-Westphalia have been able to write successful innovation stories thanks to the framework conditions created by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

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