The EPSRC Manufacturing Hub in Compound Semiconductors will address the need to integrate CS and silicon (Si) manufacturing, apply the manufacturing advances made in one type of CS across the different families of CSs and combine these different CSs for optimum functionality.
ICS and CSC
The recently established Institute for Compound Semiconductors (ICS), which essentially has academic functions and fabrication facilities, and Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC), which leads on translation and has growth facilities, are £80M Cardiff University and Welsh Government initiatives supporting a strategy to generate a major UK CS manufacturing cluster in South Wales. These European leading facilities will include a full 200mm (8″) CS on Si wafer process line and closely related smaller scale fabrication tools, with common operating principles and maintenance arrangements enabling the most effective translation of the envisaged research to manufacturing. Currently we are working at wafer scales up to 150mm (6″).
CS Cluster
The Future CS Hub remains an active and founding member of the CS Cluster in South Wales. CSconnected is now the formal gateway to the cluster which represents organisations directly associated with research, development, innovation and manufacturing of compound semiconductor related technologies, as well as organisations along the supply chains whose products and services are enabled by compound semiconductors.
Other members of CSconnected include core partners, the Institute for Compound Semiconductors (ICS, Cardiff University), the Compound Semiconductor Centre Ltd (CSC), the Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult and the Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials (CISM, Swansea University). These are joined by business partners IQE plc, SPTS, Microsemi (Microchip), and Newport Wafer Fab.
Together we complete the supply chain for brining new CS discoveries to market. The development of the CSconnected brings us closer to achieving our mission of establishing the UK as the primary global CS research and manufacturing hub.
CS Applications Catapult
In 2018, the CSA Catapult opened an impressive Innovation Centre, which is co-located with IQE in Newport, South Wales. The centre houses a design studio, laboratories and test facilities for power electronics, photonics and RF, supported by simulation and modelling tools and an advanced packaging facility. The Catapult currently employees 80 highly qualified staff, with many educated to PhD level. The Catapult helps companies develop new products using compound semiconductors and is currently working on projects valued at £58m with 20 academic partners and 65 industrial partners.
