Manufacturing R&D Facility: Electron Beam Epitaxy

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The UK hosts a broad range of world-leading research on nanostructured and epitaxial thin films of functional and device materials. However, there are insufficient facilities for the scale-up and production of devices arising from this work, which substantially limits IP licensing and commercial exploitation opportunities. According to our letter of support from Imperial Innovations, "a technology development gap often exists between academic research and industry", but "in the engineering disciplines, industry is risk-averse and requires that initial proof of new technologies be carried out by the academic institute itself". To bridge this gap, we plan to set up a new large-area electron beam epitaxy manufacturing system for the development, analysis, scale-up and test production of both new and existing devices. This facility will be capable of developing and utilising materials that cannot be grown easily using existing commercial techniques (e.g. molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) or metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE)). Our broad materials deposition capability would promote successful scale-up work on cheaper, large-area substrates, which often need new intermediate 'buffer' materials. It would also increase the breadth and scope of device research in the UK, offering excellent prospects for new IP generation and enabling the UK to extend its world leading position in device research into the area of device development, scale up and production.