Securing Europe's semiconductor supply chain: Italian inventors selected as finalists for the European Inventor Award 2026

• Giuseppe Crippa, Roberto Crippa, Stefano Felici, Riccardo Vettori, Raffaele Vallauri, Flavio Maggioni and team developed a method for the rapid, local production of semiconductor probe cards
• Their technology integrates thousands of microscopic probes on a single card to test chips during production, reducing European reliance on overseas supply chains
• The inventors are finalists in the ‘Industry’ category. The winners will be announced during the Award ceremony on 2 July 2026 in Berlin
• Public voting for the Popular Prize opens today and will be running until the ceremony on 2 July 2026

Munich, 12 May 2026 – Semiconductor chips are the essential building blocks of digital and digitised products across sectors. However, according to the European Commission, Europe’s share of global semiconductor production remains below 9%, leaving the region heavily dependent on overseas suppliers for key technologies. Addressing this critical gap, Italian inventor Giuseppe Crippa and his team developed a method for the rapid, local production of advanced probe cards — highly specialised devices used to test semiconductor chips before they are packaged into final products.

By enabling European chipmakers to access probe cards locally rather than relying on overseas manufacturing and repair, the innovation helps accelerate chip development and strengthen Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem. For this work, the team has been selected as finalists in the ‘Industry’ category of the European Inventor Award 2026 by an independent jury.

A microscopic new standard in semiconductor testing

Before chips are packaged into electronic devices, they must first be tested while still grouped together on a silicon wafer. Probe cards act as electromechanical interfaces: their microscopic needles touch the chip’s contact pads, connecting it to testing equipment that verifies whether the chip functions correctly.

Because each chip family requires a customised testing configuration, probe cards are extremely complex devices. Advanced versions can integrate more than 50 000 microscopic probes with spacing as small as 40 micrometres, enabling high-density, high-speed wafer testing.

Technoprobe, the company founded by Giuseppe Crippa, refined this technology through multiple engineering advances, including high-frequency probe card structures capable of transmitting signals from 1 GHz up to 110 GHz, improved mechanical guidance systems to maintain probe alignment, and thermo-mechanical stabilisation methods that ensure reliable electrical contact during repeated testing cycles.

“Probe card engineering is uniquely multidisciplinary. It’s exactly the kind of environment where talented people from different backgrounds — electronics, materials, physics, mechanics — build something no single discipline could teach,” said Flavio Maggioni.

Developing local probe card production for Europe’s chip industry

Giuseppe Crippa, a manager at STMicroelectronics, recognised in the late 1980s that Europe lacked local manufacturing and repair capabilities for probe cards. At the time, most probe cards were produced in the United States, forcing European semiconductor companies to ship equipment overseas for maintenance, resulting in costly delays.

In 1989, Crippa and his son Cristiano began producing probes in their home in Merate, gradually building what would become Technoprobe. The company’s first customer was STMicroelectronics, and early production took place in converted spaces across the family home. Over time, Technoprobe expanded its operations and international presence while keeping its core design and manufacturing activities in Italy.

Today, Technoprobe is Europe’s largest and the world’s second-largest probe card manufacturer, holding 34% of the global market for logic probe cards.

“Even semiconductor engineers rarely learn about probe cards at university. Most of us discovered probe cards only when we started working. It’s a niche so specialised that even big chip companies have only small teams who understand it,” said Raffaele Vallauri.

Giuseppe Crippa, Roberto Crippa, Stefano Felici, Riccardo Vettori, Raffaele Vallauri and Flavio Maggioni and team are among three finalists in the ‘Industry’ category of the European Inventor Award 2026. The other ‘Industry’ finalists are Greek-Swedish scientist Angeliki Triantafyllou for an enzymatic process that improves oat milk and the Swiss-Greek electrical engineer Evangelos Eleftheriou and team for contributions to digital storage. The European Patent Office will announce the winners during a livestreamed ceremony from Berlin on 2 July 2026. In addition to the four award categories, the Popular Prize will be decided through a combined vote by the public and the independent jury. Public voting opens on 12 May 2026 and will be running until the ceremony on 2 July 2026.

Find more information about the technology, its impact and the inventors here.

Media contacts European Patent Office

Roberta Romano-Götsch
EPO spokesperson

EPO press desk
[email protected] 
Tel.: +49 89 2399-1833

About the European Inventor Award

The European Inventor Award is one of Europe's most prestigious innovation prizes. Launched by the EPO in 2006, the award honours individuals and teams, who have come up with solutions to some of the biggest challenges of our time. The European Inventor Award jury consists of inventors who are all former finalists. To judge proposals, the independent panel draws on their wealth of technical, business, and intellectual property expertise. All inventors must have been granted a European patent for their invention. Read more on the various categories, prizes, selection criteria and livestream ceremony to be held on 2 July in Berlin.

About the EPO

With 6,300 staff members, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Headquartered in Munich with offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna, the EPO was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO's centralised patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 46 countries, covering a market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world's leading authority in patent information and patent searching.