Manufacturing R&D Facility: Electron Beam Epitaxy

英国在功能和器件材料的纳米结构和外延薄膜方面拥有广泛的世界领先研究。然而，没有足够的设施来扩大和生产这项工作产生的设备，这大大限制了知识产权许可和商业开发的机会。根据我们来自帝国创新公司的支持信，“学术研究和工业之间往往存在技术发展差距”，但“在工程学科中，工业是厌恶风险的，要求由学术机构自己进行新技术的初步验证”。为了弥补这一差距，我们计划建立一个新的大面积电子束外延制造系统，用于新器件和现有器件的开发、分析、放大和试生产。该设施将能够开发和利用使用现有商业技术(例如分子束外延(MBE)或金属有机气相外延(MOVPE))无法轻松生长的材料。我们广泛的材料沉积能力将促进在更便宜的大面积衬底上成功地扩大工作，这些衬底通常需要新的中间“缓冲”材料。它还将扩大英国设备研究的广度和范围，为新一代知识产权提供良好的前景，并使英国能够将其在设备研究方面的世界领先地位扩展到设备开发、扩大和生产领域。

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.