Fast-track process development: using semiconductor platforms to accelerate semiconductor progress [Invited]

Semiconductor innovation is increasingly constrained by the complexity, cost, and time involved in developing and optimizing advanced manufacturing processes. Traditional R&D approaches anchored in sequential experimentation and tool-specific workflows create critical bottlenecks that impede progress across the full spectrum of semiconductor technologies, including deposition, patterning, etching, doping, and integration. In this perspective, we present a new paradigm: leveraging semiconductor platforms themselves as engines for accelerating their own advancement. We introduce the EMPOWEr framework— E xpedited M anufacturing P rocess O ptimization through W afer-scale E xpe r imentation—which reimagines semiconductor wafers not as passive substrates, but as programmable experimental platforms enabling massively parallel process exploration. By embedding controlled process variability and integrated characterization directly into wafer-scale infrastructure, EMPOWEr addresses long-standing bottlenecks in process optimization, expands the materials and methods accessible to backend integration, and opens new pathways toward agile, scalable, and sustainable semiconductor innovation. This perspective outlines how EMPOWEr can transform semiconductor R&D into a self-reinforcing, high-throughput ecosystem, accelerating both the pace and scope of next-generation microfabrication.