Funding for carbon nanotube process

Surrey NanoSystems has secured second-round funding of £2.5m from Octopus Ventures, IP Group,

and other investors.

The capital will help to commercialise an innovative low-temperature growth process for carbon nanotubes (CNTs), targeted for use as an interconnection technology in semiconductor devices.

According to Surrey NanoSystems, the innovation will help silicon-integrated circuit manufacturers to overcome a critical problem that threatens the evolution to next-generation geometry sizes, speeds and power conservation.

Octopus Ventures, a specialist investor in early-stage and expanding companies, provided £1.75m. Surrey NanoSystems' initial venture capital investor, IP Group, through IP Venture Fund, together with Surrey University and other investors, provided £750,000.

‘The semiconductor industry urgently needs a new interconnection technology. If you can solve the problem of growing precision carbon nanotubes at silicon-friendly temperatures - and we have - it opens up a massive potential market,’ said Ben Jensen, chief technical officer of Surrey NanoSystems. ‘We expect to be the company that is able to offer a viable new interconnection process for high-volume semiconductor fabrication - one that really exploits the incredible performance properties of carbon nanotubes.’