Responsible Electronics and Circular Technologies Centre (REACT) is a £5.5m project funded by UKRI to establish the UK’s first sustainable electronics centre in Scotland. REACT will drive the transition to Net Zero electronics, addressing both the environmental and economic challenges faced by the industry. The centre aims to promote the adoption of green technologies—often neglected by the electronics industry—through collaboration between academia, industry, and policymakers.
Clusters are vital to bringing industry and academia together to drive the compound semiconductor industry forward. CSconnected is the world’s first compound semiconductor cluster, with 13 partners, including the Catapult, and is recognised as a world-leading centre of excellence in compound semiconductor research, innovation and manufacturing.
In 2022, the Catapult expanded its radio frequency (RF) testing capabilities to cover characterisation and verification of devices spanning frequencies up to 67 GHz, covering 5G bands, both sub 6 GHz and mmWave, and resilient communications frequencies.
The Secure 5G project built a flexible platform that enabled companies to roll out and maintain their own quantum-safe private networks, with targeted applications for Industry 4.0, mobile edge computing (MEC), the Internet of Things (IoT) and highly secure environments such as defence. 5G Open-RAN (open radio access networks ) offer more open and accessible network architecture, which will improve the UK’s competitiveness, network flexibility and reduce costs.
The Catapult is playing a critical role in the development of supply chains for electric vehicles in the UK and across the globe. That market comprises power electronics, machines, and drives (PEMD).
The vision for this project was to develop and provide a supply chain for high temperature operation Hall effect sensors. These detectors can measure high frequency electromagnetic field switching for electric motors and drives, using a completely innovative Hall sensor element made from graphene.
This project, with partners API Capacitors and Integral Powertrain, developed a UK manufacturing capability for readily scalable - in terms of capacitance and shape - thin film capacitors capable of operating at sustained temperatures of approximately 125°C. The Catapult carried out durability testing and data modelling on the new prototype design at temperatures and currents which are beyond the capability of standard technologies, and we used data modelling techniques that effectively simulate years of operation in an EV.
When CSA Catapult was set up in 2018, the first key market identified was vehicle electrification, with predicted significant growth in demand for power electronics, machines and drives (PEMD) to deliver electrification of the transport sector.
This project brings together CSA Catapult, BT and Space Forge to develop high-frequency and energy-efficient radio frequency (RF) GaN (Gallium Nitride) power amplifiers for massive MIMO systems.
The SiNQ project (Silicon Nitride for Quantum Computing) aims to develop and establish a UK supply chain for integrated photonic components for trapped ion quantum computers.
