News: Suppliers
18 January 2023
III-V Epi appoints Neil Gerrard as director of epitaxy
III-V Epi Ltd of Glasgow, Scotland, UK — which provides a fast-turnaround molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) service for custom compound semiconductor wafer design, manufacturing, test and characterization — has appointed Dr Neil Gerrard as director of epitaxy, with the role of helping to meet the MBE and MOCVD III-V epitaxial manufacturing, support and R&D requirements of III-V Epi’s customers. These range from universities, development departments and start-ups through to defence and smaller datacoms and telecoms companies.
In over 30 years of industrial experience, Gerrard’s previous III-V compound semiconductor manufacturing experience has included technology direction; new product development; and wafer fab and epitaxy operations. His roles have ranged from technical marketing director at Aixtron UK Ltd (Thomas Swan); UK managing drector at LayTec UK; to engineering lead in start-ups KUBOS and Optical Reference Systems. Gerrard helped to set up and run the wafer fab at multi-billion-dollar company Nortel Networks. He also helped introduce the MOCVD facility at Sivers.
Gerrard first worked with fellow III-V Epi director professor Richard Hogg while he was director of operations & business development for the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Between them, they helped to set up the UK’s National Centre for III-V Technologies at The University of Sheffield.
Gerrard has a PhD from the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). He followed this with post-doctoral research at Bell Labs, where he first began honing his MOCVD skills.
