ASSET project gains £1.3m in Welsh Government funding

The Welsh Government has announced a new £1.3m project to develop semiconductor processing technologies for a range of applications, including autonomous vehicles, novel devices for clean energy, future mobility, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced packaging, and biosensors and wearable sensors.

Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the project ASSET (Application Specific Semiconductor Etching Technology) is funded under the Welsh Government’s SMARTExpertise program and is an industrially driven, collaborative project with partners across south Wales, including: SPTS Technologies, IQE, The Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC), Biovici, BioMEMS, Swansea and Cardiff Universities, and Integrated Compound Semiconductors Ltd (in Manchester, UK).

The industrial partners provide technologies that go into almost all the world’s leading smartphones. By developing a host of new semiconductor process technologies, ASSET aims to develop these technologies for compound semiconductors and next-generation semiconductor materials to service new emerging applications in automotive sensing, 5G, photonics and healthcare.

The ASSET project follows the recent announcement of the new £90m Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials (CISM) facility at Swansea University, which is expected to be completed in first-half 2021.

“The ASSET project is another example of south Wales’ semiconductor cluster working together to deliver world-class technology and drive economic growth for Wales,” comments professor Owen Guy, head of chemistry at Swansea University and lead of the ASSET project.

“The ASSET project gives the consortium the ability to work with the extensive fabrication supply chain in the region to further expand our capabilities and capitalize on new and exciting market opportunities,” says SPTS Technologies’ president Kevin Crofton.

“The south Wales semiconductor industry employs over 1400 highly skilled people in the region and is set to expand rapidly over the next five years with the development of 5G, AI and other mega-trend markets,” says Wyn Meredith of the Compound Semiconductor Centre. “ASSET will support these developments by developing a range of advanced semiconductor processes and expertise to overcome technical and industry challenges.”

See related items:

UKRPIF making £30m investment in new Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials at Swansea University

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