The facility is part of a £10.6m project funded by Advantage West Midlands (AWM) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the Birmingham Science City Energy Efficiency & Demand project.
The University of Warwick is leading the project in collaboration with the University of Birmingham as part of the Science City Research Alliance programme. Some £9.5m has been invested in leading-edge equipment, which will be accessible to local industry and academia.
The new facility is headed by the University of Warwick’s Professor Phil Mawby, who marked the opening by presenting the first semiconductor wafer to be processed by the new facility to Professor Chris Snowden, president of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Professor Mawby is one of the University of Warwick’s senior professors in the School of Engineering and has an international reputation for research excellence in power electronics.
‘The new Science City Cleanroom builds on the Warwick Institute for Sustainable Energy and Resources (WISER), which links together energy research at Warwick, including the fundamental sciences, economics, business and social studies and now creates new links with other local universities and high tech business.
‘Power electronics is the technology used to manage electrical energy efficiently. It is a generic technology with a vast array of applications, from the very low power levels found in mobile phones to the very high levels used in power distribution grids. Technological advances in this area have a significant potential to reduce energy consumption, even at a time when the global demand is growing rapidly. Japan judges power electronics to be one of the three most important technologies that are necessary for building a low carbon future. This award will greatly assist our research in these areas.’