The Birmingham spinout is entering the final stages of testing for its semiconductor technology.
Irresistible Materials (IM), a UK-based semiconductor technology spinout from University of Birmingham, announced on Wednesday that it is launching the final stages of testing for its product.
Founded in 2010, IM has developed a material that incorporates small molecules and is used to coat silicon chips before circuits are etched into them. The material is activated through exposure to extreme ultraviolet light that has a wavelength of 13.5 nanometres (nm).
Current manufacturing techniques rely on light with a wavelength of 193nm, which has limited how small features can be etched onto a chip.
IM’s technology is expected to result in smaller and lighter devices in time for the electronics industry’s timeline of introducing extreme ultraviolet lithography by 2019.
The company is using a mixture of existing funding from the private sector and a grant from government innovation agency Innovate UK for the final testing stages, which will take place at Birmingham’s Nano-Physics, Chemistry and Engineering Research Laboratory.
Alex Robinson, one of the inventors of the technology and founding director of IM, will lead the testing.
IM previously raised $400,000 in 2014 from Innovate UK and assorted angel investors, following a $400,000 commitment from Mercia Fund Management and private backers in 2013.
Robinson said: “Staff expertise at the university will be central to this £1m collaborative testing project, which will use state of the art nanoscale testing facilities at the university, as well as partner laboratories in Europe and the US, to investigate the application of extremely novel chemistry to a large scale industrial problem.”
