CS consortium lands Eurostars funding
31 October 2018
A UK - Netherlands consortium of semiconductor device specialists has won a €1.2 million (£1.06m) award to develop photodetector solutions for ultra-high speed data-communications applications.
The Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC) – a joint venture between Cardiff University and IQE Plc - will deliver MISCA (Monolithically Integrated Detector Solutions for Next Generation Communications Applications) in collaboration with Integrated Compound Semiconductors (ICS) Ltd of Manchester, and VTEC Lasers and Sensors of Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
CSC Director and consortium lead, Dr Wyn Meredith, said: “The project aims to drive a radical improvement in component performance via advances in semiconductor materials integration and will result in a new European source of high performance detector products for fibre optic data-communications applications.”
Professor Mohamed Missous, founder and CEO of ICS added: “The rapid growth of the high speed optical transceiver market is an exciting opportunity for ICS. The demands of optical transmission markets require a deep understanding of RF component design to complement high-quality optoelectronic device manufacture.”
Led by the European Union through Horizon 2020, Eurostars is a funding and support programme, aimed at R&D-performing SMEs that wish to exploit benefits from international collaboration.
Dr Jan Mink, CEO of VTEC added: “The Eurostars programme is specifically aimed at enabling agile SMEs to collaborate across Europe, and gives VTEC a great opportunity to collaborate with like-minded companies in the UK to extend our value chain. We see great potential in using semiconductor component integration to enable a new class of low power consumption, high performance detector products.”
The mission of CSC is to accelerate the commercialisation of Compound Semiconductor materials and device research.
Based in Cardiff, the Centre plays a pivotal role in CS Connected – the world’s first Compound Semiconductor cluster.
