Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre

In 1982, the Flemish Government set up a program to strengthen the microelectronics industry in Flanders. This program included setting up a laboratory for advanced research in microelectronics (imec), a semiconductor foundry (former Alcatel Microelectronics, now STMicroelectronics and AMI Semiconductor,) and a training program for VLSI design engineers. The latter is now fully integrated in the IMEC activities.

IMEC was founded in 1984 as a non-profit organization led by Prof. Roger Baron Van Overstraeten. The name IMEC is an acronym of the original full name: Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum VZW. It is supervised by a board of directors, which includes delegates from industry, Flemish universities and the Flemish Government. Since 1984, IMEC has been led by Roger Van Overstraeten, Gilbert Declerck (as of June 1999), and Luc Van den Hove (as of July 2009).

In 2015, IMEC created a joint venture with Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).

In February 2016, it was announced that IMEC would be merging with the Flemish digital research center, iMinds. The merge was finalized on September 21, 2016.

In January 2024, it was announced that IMEC would open a centre of R&D in the Andalusia Technology Park in Málaga, Spain.

In March 2024, the Flemish Government stated that IMEC would "drastically reduce" its partnerships with China due to export control concerns.

Neuropixels technology

The performance of the Neuropixels probes and their potential for transformational neuroscience experiments was described in a November 9, 2017 paper published in Nature. In 2019, The New York Times reported that IMEC's Neuropixels technology is widely recognized as the most advanced method of gathering data from brain cells.

Brain-On-Chip research

In 2018, IMEC announced the creation of a research venture together with KU Leuven, UZ Leuven and VIB, called Mission Lucidity. The venture’s aim is to decode dementia. IMEC is creating human-specific living brain models, so called 'brains-on-chips’ which automate and miniaturize human stem cell manipulations, and developing technology to generate programmable, instrumented 3D brain models with single-cell precision. The project was supported by a Collaborative Science Award of one million dollars by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Point of care blood test devices (Johns Hopkins University & miDiagnostics)

Peter Peumans, in charge of IMEC's life science technologies program, helped found miDiagnostics and was appointed CTO. In 2019, NASA awarded funding to miDiagnostics to test a technology for monitoring astronauts’ health status under zero gravity conditions, with the aim of advancing space health diagnostics.