External validation
In May 2020, SFN is awarded a £1.7 million grant from UKRI's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. The grant is specifically directed at further development of the our semiconductor platform transistor's enabling process technology.
For a company that had been self-funded since incorporation in 2015 — with no external investment beyond the founders — this is significant external validation of both the technology and the commercial opportunity.
What the grant enabled
The UKRI grant funded continued process development work, accelerating the path from characterised physics to manufacturable wafer process. It also provided the financial stability to sustain the team through a period of intensive technical development without the pressure of immediate commercialisation.
The context
By May 2020, SFN had already produced its first physical wafers at Semefab, validated its physics models against real-world wafer characteristics, and begun to see the commercial shape of what our semiconductor platform could do in power electronics and beyond.
The UKRI award recognised this progress and provided the resource to continue it.