UK provides £1.1 million to support UltraRAM transfer

Technology News | July 16, 2024

By Peter Clarke

Analog compound semiconductor Materials & processes Memory & Data Storage

Startup Quinas and engineered wafer supplier IQE, together with the universities of Lancaster and Cardiff, have been awarded £1.1 million to develop the UltraRAM non-volatile memory. The money comes from government technology support agency Innovate UK.

UltraRAM is based on quantum resonant tunneling of electrons, within a layered compound semiconductor structure that can be manufactured on silicon wafers (see UK team moves UltraRAM to silicon substrate). The technology was invented by Professor Manus Hayne from the Physics Department at Lancaster University. Quinas was founded in 2023 to commercialize the technology.

The company has claimed the memory has 1,000-year non-volatile retention – superior to flash memory – with an endurance of 10 million cycles while being able to be written to and read quickly at speeds similar to DRAM. Hence being dubbed a universal memory.

The award comes after Quinas was given an InnovateUK grant to begin the process of commercializing the memory technology (see UltraRAM startup gets £300,000 grant).

Lancaster to Cardiff

Quinas will co-ordinate the latest research project although most of the money for the one-year project will be spent at IQE in Cardiff to scale up the manufacturing of layered compound semiconductors. This will involve IQE developing the capability to grow layers of gallium antimonide and aluminium antimonide. The project’s aim is to transfer wafer production from 3-inch diameter wafers at Lancaster University to 6-inch diameter ones at IQE. This will be achieved by using metal-organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), rather than molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), which is typically used at universities.

Professor Hayne, who serves Quinas as chief scientific officer, said: “UltraRAM represents a tremendous economic opportunity for the UK, and the efficiencies it could bring to computing at all scales has the potential for huge energy savings and carbon emission reduction.” He added: “Lancaster will do some initial MBE epitaxy as a control/template for the industrial growth. Our key role will be to characterise the antimonide material grown at IQE, and once sufficient quality is confirmed we will fabricate and test UltraRAM memory on small areas of the wafers from IQE.”

Lancaster University and Quinas will continue to work on UltraRAM scaling, by reducing the size of individual devices and making larger and larger arrays with a plan to move to 200mm-diameter wafers before transferring the technology to a commercial foundry wafer fab.