Cambridge University Spinout Porotech Aims to Lead Porous GaN Materials Space
With a fresh round of seed funding and plans for a pilot plant, U.K. gallium nitride startup Porotech is making strides to bring its porous GaN semiconductor solutions to market.
With a fresh round of seed funding and plans for a pilot plant, U.K. gallium nitride startup Porotech is making strides to bring its porous GaN semiconductor solutions to market.
Earlier this month, the company landed a £1.5 million ($1.86 million) funding round led by U.K. firm IQ Capital Partners and Cambridge University’s commercialization unit, Cambridge Enterprise. Martlet Capital and angel investors from Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Capital Group also contributed.
The company spun out of Cambridge University in 2018. After developing a business strategy out of Cambridge University’s ideaSpace incubator, Porotech won a £20,000 first-place cash prize in the school’s Postdoc Business Plan Competition in October 2018. Last year, it snagged the top award at the prestigious Internet Plus Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in China.
The startup’s co-founders, Tongtong Zhu, Yingjun Liu, and Rachel Oliver, share nearly 40 years of combined experience in material science and applications. The team has patents filed for their methods of porosifying material and semiconductor structures and electrochemically etching a semiconductor structure.
Porotech cites its product IP, in-house expertise, and licensing business model as key drivers of its commercial potential. The company’s porous GaN semiconductor wafers can be used to lower the manufacturing costs applied to LEDs, lasers, power electronics, quantum systems, sensors, and solar cells.
The startup is currently working on securing early customers for a pilot trial. Zhu commented to Compound Semiconductor that Porotech’s pilot plant is expected to be in operation before June, starting with small-scale production for customer trials.
Porotech has a handful of job openings listed on its website.
