The UK is creating a new route for semiconductor companies to move technologies from the laboratory towards commercial production, bringing design, engineering, testing, and manufacturing expertise together within a national capability.
The Semiconductor Catapult will work with start-ups, SMEs and larger businesses from facilities in Newport, Bristol, and Glasgow.
Companies will be able to access specialist laboratories, equipment and engineering expertise across areas including advanced packaging, power electronics, photonics, RF systems, and quantum technologies.
The initiative is intended to help businesses tackle complex technical challenges earlier in development, reducing the risks involved in validating new technologies and moving towards scale-up.
Its first phase will establish core silicon and integration capabilities before progressing towards system-level integration and small-volume production.
Speaking on the initiative, Caroline O’Brien, Chief Executive Officer of the Semiconductor Catapult, said: “Semiconductors are the critical infrastructure behind AI hardware, defence, energy and communications.
“The decisions made today will determine where the technologies, companies and economic value behind those markets are created.
“The market opportunity for the UK in AI hardware and defence is moving quickly. The Semiconductor Catapult ensures more of the technologies, supply chains and economic benefits created by semiconductor innovation are developed and retained in the UK.
“The Semiconductor Catapult strengthens and builds new UK supply chains, supports start-ups, SMEs and large companies so they can be anchored long-term in the UK.
Why the UK is reinforcing semiconductor supply chains
Semiconductors underpin many advanced technologies, making the ability to design, integrate, test and manufacture them an important part of the UK’s industrial capability.
Building stronger domestic supply chains can give companies greater access to the specialist expertise and infrastructure needed to turn research into commercial products.
The Semiconductor Catapult is designed to bring several of these capabilities together, allowing businesses to work across different stages of development rather than accessing them separately.
The Catapult will also support work across UK supply chains for both silicon and compound semiconductors, providing capabilities that cover complete products from design through to validation.
Four areas of semiconductor development
The Catapult will concentrate on four technology areas:
- Advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration will support chiplet and system-in-package architectures, helping address the scaling limitations faced by conventional semiconductor approaches.
- Power electronics and thermal management will focus on technologies needed for high-density AI hardware and next-generation infrastructure.
- Photonics and optical interconnects will target data infrastructure and emerging applications, including silicon and quantum photonics and sensing.
- The fourth area, RF and mixed-signal integration, will support next-generation radio frequency technologies for beamforming applications and analogue integration.
Together, these disciplines give the Semiconductor Catapult a broad engineering base spanning RF and microwave, photonics, power electronics, advanced packaging, and quantum.
Supporting companies through development
Businesses can work with the Semiconductor Catapult through commercial and collaborative research and development projects.
Access to specialist engineering teams, laboratories and equipment will allow companies to test new technologies, validate designs and address technical challenges before committing to later stages of development.
The Catapult describes its capability as covering the full development chain, including design, development, integration, advanced packaging, testing and validation.
Its facilities in Newport, Bristol, and Glasgow will serve companies across the UK, from early-stage businesses developing new technologies to larger organisations working on complex semiconductor applications.
O’Brien added: “By bringing together multidisciplinary expertise, specialist facilities and system-level integration capability, the Semiconductor Catapult will help companies reduce risk and accelerate their route to market.
“We bridge gaps in device innovation, test, validation and scale-up, particularly in heterogeneous design, photonics integration and in RF, serving the AI hardware and defence markets.”
Two phases towards scale-up
The Catapult’s development will take place in two phases.
The first will establish an integration-ready capability alongside core silicon capabilities, giving customers the means to validate architectures and reduce risk during the early stages of development.
The second phase will demonstrate more mature system-level integration and develop clearer routes towards scale-up and small-volume production.
This progression is intended to help close the gap between research and commercialisation, giving companies a route to test and develop technologies before moving towards manufacturing.
Ultimately, the Semiconductor Catapult aims to help companies turn UK research and development expertise into products and manufacturing capability while supporting the growth of domestic semiconductor supply chains.
