Semiconductor manufacturing scale-up - feasibility

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £11.5 million in innovation projects. These are to assist the improvement and scale up for semiconductor manufacture within the UK.

The aim of this competition is to enable UK businesses in the semiconductor supply chain to develop their manufacturing capability. This will be achieved by building resilience in the UK supply chain for the key area of enabling technologies.

In this feasibility study phase Innovate UK will invest up to £1.5 million with the aim of:

• understanding the existing facilities and capabilities
• identifying best practice
• establishing innovations and new manufacturing techniques
• encouraging new collaborations across industry and academia

Your proposal must identify or deliver a clear, game-changing intervention and address an identified industrial requirement or improvement. This must realistically and significantly meet and provide a long-term commitment to supporting the UK semiconductor industry.

Your proposal must align to the scope criteria for this competition.

This competition is split into 2 strands:

• Semiconductor industry skills and training
• Semiconductor manufacturing scale-up – feasibility (this strand)

This feasibility strand of the competition is phase 1 of a potential 2-phase competition.

A further competition, Innovate UK Transformative Technologies, is open in conjunction with the Semiconductor manufacturing scale up feasibility competition.

It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct competition and strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total project costs of up to £150,000
• start by 1 August 2023
• end by 31 November 2023
• last up to 4 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

If collaborative you can work with other UK registered organisations.

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Funding

Up to £1.5 million has been allocated to fund projects in this feasibility phase of this programme. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For feasibility studies, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under State aid.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to enable UK businesses in the semiconductor supply chain to develop their manufacturing capability. This will be achieved by building resilience in the UK supply chain for the key area of enabling technologies.

In this feasibility study phase Innovate UK will invest up to £1.5 million with the aim of:

• understanding the existing facilities and capabilities
• identifying best practice
• establishing innovations and new manufacturing techniques
• encouraging new collaborations across industry and academia

Your proposal must identify or deliver a clear, game-changing intervention and address a clear industrial requirement or improvement. This must realistically and significantly meet and provide a long-term commitment to supporting the UK semiconductor industry requirement.

Portfolio approach

We want to fund a variety of projects addressing key technologies and industrial requirements to support the UK semiconductors landscape. We call this a portfolio approach.

Specific themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• compound semiconductors
• silicon semiconductors
• development of Process Design Kits (PDKs)
• manufacturing process development and best practice for scale-up
• device and circuit simulation and design
• semiconductor wafer and device fabrication
• front end of line processes
• back end of line processes
• in-line and end of line test
• assembly packaging and test
• wafer fabrication operations sustainability
• cross-sectoral solutions
• hybridisation or heterogeneous development,
• system-on-chip development
• system-in-package development
• open access foundries models
• accelerate development cycles
• proof of concept and validation of designs
• test innovative designs and processes

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

Research categories

We will fund feasibility projects as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Projects we will not fund

We are not funding projects that are:

• printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication
• PCB assembly and test, excluding bare die operations
• discrete passive devices, excluding on-chip integration

We cannot fund projects that are:

• dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
• dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

An online briefing event was held on 3rd March. Click here to watch the recording.