Pragmatic opens the UK's first 300mm wafer manufacturing fab
Pragmatic Semiconductor has officially opened the UK's first 300mm semiconductor wafer fabrication line at Pragmatic Park in Durham.
The manufacturing facility produces chips based on Pragmatic's flexible integrated circuit technology. The company's FlexICs are low-cost, sustainable alternatives to silicon chips, ultra-thin, with a flexible form factor they enable connect, sense and compute capabilities, fuelling the IoT across multiple sectors such as consumer, industrial and healthcare.
The company has set out a mission to provide item-level intelligence to trillions of smart objects over the next decade across a wide range of applications.
Pragmatic Park has the capacity to host up to nine fabrication lines, each capable of producing billions of chips per year. Compared to standard silicon fabs, Pragmatic uses fewer process steps and a more concentrated footprint in its manufacturing, demonstrating its sustainable approach.
The optimised manufacturing process supports extremely rapid production cycles of less than 48 hours, at what the company claims to be "very low cost". The manufacturing process also uses significantly less energy and less water than typical silicon manufacturing, and fewer harmful gases.
The company states in a press release that the manufacturing facility will enable Pragmatic to meet the growing demand for its technology. Over the next five years, Pragmatic expects to create over 500 highly skilled jobs in the North-East of England and Cambridge.
"Today’s official opening marks a key milestone in Pragmatic’s growth trajectory and for the UK on the global semiconductor stage. I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved and the ambition of our mission to enable item level intelligence in over a trillion sustainable, smart items over the next decade. Such intelligence at scale has the power to accelerate the digital transformation across industries. Sustainability is at the very core of our technology and extends to how FlexICs enable our customers to further drive innovations and pathways through their products and services towards global net zero goals,” says Dave Moore, CEO, Pragmatic Semiconductor, i the press release.
