Bringing industry and academia together to produce new products and processes can prove challenging. The Institute for Compound Semiconductors’ state-of-the-art cleanroom attempts to bridge the gap between research and industrial scale-up. Professor Peter Smowton explains how the ERDF-funded facility can offer end-to-end CS business solutions for tomorrow’s technologies.
“The Institute for Compound Semiconductors cleanroom is open for business. It’s where we work hand-in-hand with industry to trial as yet undreamt future technologies.
Compound semiconductors can produce performance beyond silicon. As ‘compounds’ of elements either side of those in group IV of the periodic table, they are 100 times faster than silicon, and can emit and sense light, all the way from the infrared, through the visible and into the ultra-violet part of the spectrum.
Funded by the ERDF, our purpose built 1500m2 facility enables us to scale-up production of Compound Semiconductor chips to a 150mm and 200mm (8”) wafer capacity, critical for industrial relevance.
