£3 million grant will help establish 'milestone' chip research facility at University of Glasgow

Developments prototyped at the new facility could find applications in biomedical implants, sustainable and biodegradable sensors, and quantum computing interfaces.

Funding of £3 million has been secured for a “milestone” semiconductor research facility at the University of Glasgow.

The grant will allow the institution to build one of the UK’s most advanced research facilities for silicon chip integration and packaging. The funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Strategic Equipment Grant scheme will help the university establish “Analogue” - the Automated Nano Analysing, Characterisation and Additive Packaging Suite.

The facility, which will be based at the university’s Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre (ARC), brings together researchers from the James Watt School of Engineering with a strategic network of partners from industry, national semiconductor facilities and academia, with the goal of fast tracking disruptive new technologies into applications. New developments prototyped at Analogue could find applications in biomedical implants, sustainable and biodegradable sensors, and quantum computing interfaces.

Clockwise from top left - Prof David Flynn, Prof Hadi Heidari, Dr Mahmoud Wagih and Prof Jeff Kettle of the James Watt School of Engineering.

Professor Hadi Heidari, head of the University of Glasgow’s electronics and nanoscale engineering research division, and the project’s principal investigator, 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. This initiative will help spark new innovations across the tech sector and cultivate valuable partnerships between academia and industry, helping to support breakthrough research which can drive economic expansion.”

The facility will be open to academia and industry working on low-volume and high-value research and development projects, helping them to rapidly prototype advanced nanoelectronic devices. It will also provide support for ongoing efforts to decarbonise the electronics supply chain by helping researchers gather data on their product’s environmental impact.

The new suite aims to support the UK government’s semiconductor strategy by providing access to new technologies to boost cutting-edge research and development. It will also play a role in expanding the country’s semiconductor skills base through industry-led events and partnerships with centres for doctoral training across the UK.

Analogue will house chip probing equipment, advanced packaging capabilities and additive electronics manufacturing using “state-of-the-art” tools. The equipment will be automated as a single suite, making it the UK’s first machine-driven integrated assembly and characterisation line for semiconductor devices. Its advanced automation will allow researchers to use the suite remotely, with support from on-site experts, helping to streamline the research process.

A team of 23 academics and more than 100 researchers and students will make regular use of the facility. Analogue’s industrial partners include Arm, PragmatIC, Inseto, Nano-Dimension, Vector Photonics, Touchlab, Printed Electronics, Kelvin Nanotechnology, Denchi Power, SeeQC, Quantum Science, Labman, the Scotland 5G Centre and CENSIS. The multidisciplinary project is being “strongly supported” by other colleagues at the James Watt School of Engineering from different areas of quantum technologies, medical implantables, wearables and diagnostics, ultrasound systems and sustainable electronics.

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