ALBANY -- The University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering will begin collaborating with IMEC, a leading European research lab that has long been considered a major rival.

Based in Leuven, Belgium, a university city in the Flanders region, IMEC employs 1,500 people and is considered the leading nanotechnology center in Europe.

IMEC was started in 1984 by the Flemish government and also has a lab in the Netherlands. Although its doors opened in 2004, the NanoCollege's roots date back to 2001, and it has been competing with IMEC for recognition and resources since then.

Like the NanoCollege, IMEC brings together academics and corporate partners to exploit advances in nanotechnology and the computer chip industry.

The NanoCollege and IMEC will collaborate on extreme ultraviolet lithography, a cutting-edge process in computer chip manufacturing that has yet to be adopted commercially.

Semiconductor companies use lithography to "print" circuits onto silicon wafers that are cut into computer chips following dozens of complex manufacturing steps using sophisticated equipment. Extreme ultraviolet lithography can print smaller components than current technologies.

"We can literally move in the realm of having more than a billion transistors on a chip," Alain Kaloyeros, the NanoCollege's chief administrative officer, said of the potential.

The partnership's first experiments will take place in Albany, although other work will be done in Belgium in the future.

Scientists from IBM Corp. and ASML Holdings NV, a Dutch lithography tool maker, will also participate.

The NanoCollege has been positioning itself as a center for extreme ultraviolet lithography research. In 2006, it installed a $65 million extreme ultraviolet lithography machine known as the Alpha Demo Tool. Made by ASML, the research tool is the first of its kind in the world and will be used in the experiments designed by the partnership.

"This is a long-term collaboration," Kaloyeros said.