The University of Glasgow said it had received a £3 million grant that will allow it to build the facility, set to be named ANALOGUE – the Automated Nano AnaLysing, characterisatiOn and additive packaGing sUitE.
The university said that the new center would enable the rapid prototyping and characterisation of a wide range of semiconductor devices. New developments prototyped at ANALOGUE could find applications in biomedical implants, sustainable and biodegradable sensors, and quantum computing interfaces, the university noted.
According to the university, the new facility will be based at the university’s Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre (ARC), and will bring together researchers from the University’s James Watt School of Engineering “with a strategic network of partners from industry, national semiconductor facilities, and academia, aligned with fast tracking disruptive new technologies into applications.”
The facility will aim to support the UK government’s semiconductor strategy by providing access to new technologies to boost cutting-edge research and development, and will play a role in expanding the country’s semiconductor skills base. The suite will house chip probing equipment, advanced packaging capabilities, and additive electronics manufacturing using state-of-the-art tools.
The project’s principal investigator Professor Hadi Heidari, head of the University of Glasgow’s Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering Research Division, said: “This grant is a significant milestone for semiconductor research in the UK, which is a key part of the country’s economy. The electronics sector as a whole supports more than a million jobs in the country, and the UK government has ambitious plans to grow the sector in the years to come.
“The establishment of ANALOGUE represents a substantial advance in the UK’s semiconductor research infrastructure for heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging.”