UK grants 2D semiconductor research £6 million

Scientists from three UK universities have been granted £6 million to develop single-atomic layer semiconductors under a program called NEED2D.

www.eenewsanalog.com/, Apr. 29, 2025 – 

The materials to be developed include graphene and related compounds, in which electrons travel with greater efficiency than in silicon. This reduces energy wasted as heat and aids miniaturization and 3D stacking.

Part of the money is being provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has been granted to a team of scientists from Queen Mary University of London, University of Nottingham and University of Glasgow. Some £2 million will be provided by more than 20 manufacturers and research institutions with which NEED2D is expected to work.

No partners were named and the announcement did not mention how long NEED2D is expected to run or any pathway from research to development and into commercialization.

IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) works with most of the leading semiconductor manufacturers and is proposing the introduction of transition metal dichalcogenides (MX2) into the semiconductor channel of silicon transistors (see IMEC adds 2D semiconductor channels to logic scaling roadmap).

Sir Colin Humphreys, Professor of Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London, who leads the NEED2D project, said that two-dimensional materials have can save 90 percent of the energy required by data centers and thereby help UK meet Net Zero goals.

The UK’s National Grid for electrical supply predicts that 30 percent of its supply will be used for data centers by 2034

Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, was a co-founder of graphene electronics startup Paragraf Ltd. (Somersham, England) in 2015 and served the company as chairman in its early years.

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