2 August 2011

Industrial–academic collaborations demonstrated at Southampton University

UK-based Oxford Instruments says that industry and academia came together at the University of Southampton recently to demonstrate the success of an industrial collaboration that is creating the nanotechnology needed for smaller, low-power devices.

With talks by university researchers in nanotechnology and industrialists from Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology (OIPT), the workshop ‘Knowledge Creation Partnership – From Funding to Results’ described how the two organizations have partnered during a two-year collaboration to develop nanotechnology tools. Combining the university’s knowledge and research with Oxford Instruments’ tools has already produced results, and these were presented by the university’s professor Peter Ashburn, Oxford Instruments’ chief technology officer Dr Mike Cooke, and their colleagues. 

“We recognize the importance of partnerships between the commercial and the academic sectors in today’s highly competitive, fast-moving and demanding global markets, and at Oxford Instruments we see businesses forming the bridge between science and the consumer,” comments OIPT’s business development director Frazer Anderson. “Through collaborations with some of the world’s leading scientists and institutions, companies like ours turn smart science into commercially successful products,” he adds.  

“Our university and Oxford Instruments have worked together to develop a range of processes for the company’s tools which will be used to make nanoscale transistors,” says Ashburn, of the university’s Nano Research Group within the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). “These new plasma-based technologies provide etching and deposition functions on nanoscale materials and are being used in the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, one of Europe’s leading multi-disciplinary state-of-the-art cleanroom complexes,” he adds. 

OIPT is also involved in collaborations at the Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in the USA, and with Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), each focussing on key areas of scientific R&D, ultimately leading to the development of tools for use in wider markets of research and production.

See related items:

Taiwan’s ITRI and Oxford Instruments agree research collaboration

University of Southampton and Oxford Instruments sign collaboration agreement

See: Oxford Instruments Company Profile

Tags: OIPT

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