Cardiff-IQE venture wins £1m Award

28 November 2016

Cardiff’s joint venture with IQE has been awarded £1.1m to develop a new diode laser manufacturing process.

The funding from Innovate UK will help the Compound Semiconductor Centre develop high performance, low cost laser chips that can speed up fibre optic communications.

The Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC) was formed in August 2015 as a joint venture between Cardiff University, one of the Britain's leading research universities, and IQE plc, the world leading supplier of advanced compound semiconductor wafer products.

CSC aims to work with Compound Semiconductor Technologies (Glasgow) and Swansea University to transfer the research to high volume manufacturing in two years.

Project Lead, Dr Wyn Meredith, said: “The adoption of cloud services, video on demand and emerging internet services are driving a massively expanding global data bandwidth demand..."

“The UK is already a major player in the supply of high performance compound semiconductor materials and components that underpin the global fibre optic network. However, next generation high capacity networks will require higher performance, lower cost laser sources.”

Dr Wyn Meredith Director, Compound Semiconductor Centre

The project aims to bring to market laser chips that are 20 to 30% cheaper to manufacture.

The CSC funding forms part of a £25m tranche of awards to help UK businesses develop new manufacturing methods and materials. The awards were made to 170 partners in 64 projects that were successful in a materials and manufacturing competition.