news digest ♦ LEDs SPTS bestows Swansea Uni
with £600k BluGlass shares The semiconductor equipment maker is supporting the university’s Department of Research and Innovation
SPTS Technologies UK has made a gift to research led Swansea University, of over £600,000 worth of shares in BluGlass Limited.
BluGlass is a green Australian public company established to commercialise innovative semiconductor technology. The company, which evolved out of Sydney’s Macquarie University, has developed a novel semiconductor technology called remote plasma chemical vapour deposition (RPCVD), for the production of high efficiency devices such as LEDs and concentrated solar cells.
RPCVD has several potential advantages over current manufacturing techniques and through its low temperature deposition offers manufacturers higher performing devices and lower cost manufacturing. The company is currently developing GaN-on-silicon based LEDs.
BluGlass, last November, bought a Thomas Swan MOCVD reactor. The company is aiming to improve LED performance by growing low temperature RPCVD p-GaN on top of MOCVD grown multi-quantum wells. Growing the p-GaN layer at lower temperatures with RPCVD instead of MOCVD should reduce the InGaN MQW degradation, resulting in a brighter LED.
“SPTS has strong ties with Swansea University, and has benefited from the knowledge exchange projects through the University’s Department of Research and Innovation (DRI),” states William Johnson, CEO at SPTS.
“The DRI which acts as the bridge between industry and academia has enabled us to extend the scope of our research beyond our existing markets and gain access to funding, which has proven invaluable to our R&D teams. This gift of shares in BluGlass is our way to pay back by ‘paying it forward’ to the University in not just the current value of the shares but the potential future value of BluGlass and the opportunities for potential collaboration between Swansea University, BluGlass and Sydney’s Macquarie University.”
Current collaboration with Swansea University includes a Technology Strategy Board (TSB) funded project for the development of micro-needles for bio-medical applications. The project which includes process equipment from SPTS for the University’s clean room facility was instrumental in developing a design for manufacturing quality packaged micro-needles which are achieving a 100% success rate in initial testing.
“Swansea University are absolutely delighted by this gift and indeed with the highly successful and ongoing collaboration with SPTS and the University’s College of Engineering, particularly the work being done with Dr Owen Guy, Associate Professor,” comments Gerry Ronan, Head of IP at Swansea University. As a University we pride ourselves on our ability to collaborate with industry and this is an enlightened and most welcome way of strengthening such relationships.”
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net June 2014
Johnson added, “SPTS is at the forefront of micro- device process and manufacturing technology, and we remain committed to investing in R&D to ensure market competitiveness and industry sustainability. Our gift to Swansea University underpins our ongoing commitment to supporting the success of the Department of Research and Innovation, and we are proud to be able to support future generations of engineers and researchers at this world-class research-led institution.”
BluGlass, which evolved out of Sydney’s Macquarie University, has developed breakthrough semiconductor technology called remote plasma chemical vapour deposition (RPCVD), for the production of high efficiency devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) and concentrated solar cells. RPCVD has several potential advantages over current manufacturing techniques and through its low temperature deposition offers manufacturers higher performing devices and lower cost manufacturing.
AFMs take a tip from GaN nanowires
Using gallium nitride nanowire probes in a custom-built, four- probe instrument, could reveal new aspects of composition and performance in nanoelectronics materials and devices
A team of PML researchers has demonstrated that atomic force microscope (AFM) probe tips made from its “near-perfect” GaN nanowires are superior to standard silicon or platinum tips in the measurements of critical importance to microchip fabrication, nanobiotechnology, and other appliations.
What’s more, the scientists have invented a means of simultaneously using the nanowire tips as LEDs to illuminate a tiny sample region with optical radiation while it is scanning. This, they say, adds an entirely new dimension to the characterisation of nanoelectronics materials and devices.
By itself, an AFM provides topographical information at nanometre resolution as its probe tip - in the range of 100 nm wide and suspended from a cantilever arm - scans across a sample surface. When the tip is used at the same time to continuously transmit and receive a microwave signal, the system becomes capable of revealing charge-carrier concentrations or defect locations in specific regions of nanoscale materials and devices.
That technique, called near-field scanning microwave microscopy (NSMM), it is claimed, had never before been attempted using a nanowire probe. But as the team showed in a recent paper in Applied Physics Letters, nanowire probe tips substantially outperformed commercial platinum tips in both resolution and durability.
“A big issue for platinum probes,” says Kris Bertness, Project Leader for Metrology and Synthesis of 3D Nanostructures in the Quantum Electronics and Photonics Division, “is that if you deform them even a little bit, and their shape changes, your calibration is lost. Because they’re capacitively coupled to the sample, shape is everything.”
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