ESSEX JUNCTION — Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries has secured $30 million in federal funding to accelerate development of chips that will allow devices to connect more quickly to the internet and power electric vehicles.

The chips will be developed and manufactured at the company’s plant in Essex Junction.

GlobalFoundries executives announced the funding Monday morning at a news conference in a tent in front of the massive plant, also known as Fab 9, alongside U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who secured the funding in the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2022.

The plant has already been making the gallium-nitride-on-silicon chips on a small scale for weapons platforms for the U.S. Department of Defense. Gallium nitride is a material that can resist higher temperatures than silicon and operate at very high voltages.

“These chips have a unique ability to handle very high heat and power levels,” said Thomas Caulfield, president and chief executive of GlobalFoundries.

The funding will be used to scale up production of gallium nitride chips for both the U.S. government and commercial uses.

According to company officials, the chips would increase performance and efficiency in 5G and 6G smartphones, radio frequency wireless infrastructure, electric vehicles, industrial motors, power grids and solar energy.

Caulfield and Ken McAvey, the general manager of the Essex Junction facility, joined Leahy for the announcement, which was also a celebration of the senator’s long-standing support for the plant. Caulfield revealed Monday that the main entrance to the plant has been renamed for Leahy.

“The leadership and dedication of Sen. Leahy has been instrumental to the growth and success of semiconductor innovation and manufacturing in Vermont,” Caulfield said.

Leahy worked to make the Essex Junction plant — or fab, as they are called in the semiconductor industry — the first to be accepted by the U.S. government as a “trusted foundry,” a group of semiconductor plants run by commercial companies using procedures to ensure that the chips manufactured there are secure.

A chip manufactured at Essex Junction for an F-35 fighter jet, for example, could not be used by China to take over the aircraft. The federal government created the Trusted Foundry program when it realized that it was cost-prohibitive to produce sensitive chips on a small scale at its own fab.

The manufacturers are then able to sell their technology to commercial clients at a premium because they can guarantee that the chips are not compromised.

“This facility is the nation’s first trusted foundry thanks to Senator Leahy’s foresight and leadership and to this day makes the most extremely sensitive and classified chips that are critical to our government and our national defense and security systems,” Caulfield said.

GlobalFoundries officials said the company would use the money to set up the clean room, a manufacturing space with a minimum concentration of airborne particulates, and buy tools to extend the development and manufacturing of 200-millimeter gallium nitride wafers that integrated circuits are imprinted upon. Caulfield said the company would become the only major manufacturer to make the large wafers, which are more cost-effective than smaller wafers.

“The resulting chips will enable batteries that are smaller, charge faster and lose less power that will be used in automobiles, phones, cell towers, industrial robots around the world,” Caulfield said.

More than 2,000 GlobalFoundries employees and 800 contractors work at the Essex Junction plant making chips used in smartphones, automobiles and communications equipment, making it Vermont’s largest private employer, McAvey said.

Leahy directed another $2.6 million to train students at Vermont State University to become technicians at semiconductor plants.

Caulfield indicated that the workforce in Essex Junction would grow.

“On (GlobalFoundries’) part, we’ll continue to train, develop and grow the world-class workforce that keeps this facility running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Caulfield said.

Most smartphones in the world contain chips made at the Essex Junction plant, McAvey and Caulfield said.

“Go find a smartphone built anywhere in the world by any manufacturer and see if you can find one that doesn’t have chips made in Vermont,” Caulfield said.

Caulfied said GlobalFoundries has invested $750 million in the plant since 2015, when the company acquired IBM’s microelectronics division.