A research and development project that aims to put Scotland at the forefront of the growing £7 billion global sensors and imaging systems market has been awarded £2.6 million of funding from state development agency Scottish Enterprise.
The £6m Mirage project will see four companies together with Glasgow University’s electronics and nanoscale engineering department working to develop electronic semiconductor devices to be used in sensors and imaging systems.
The companies involved, all of them based in the Central Belt, are Cascade Technologies, Compound Semiconductor Technologies Global, Gas Sensing Solutions and Amethyst Research.
Together with Glasgow University they will provide £2.8m towards the project over the next three years with a further £241,000 of equipment provided by the Glasgow-based sensor and imaging systems innovation centre Censis.
The aim is for the companies to combine their expertise in next-generation sensing technologies to produce a wide range of products, such as asthma inhalers, infra-red cameras, gas analysers and methane sensors. Other target fields include medical diagnostics, remote gas leak detection, pollution monitoring and ultra-sensitive chemical detection.
While the companies will collaborate on technological development, none of them will compete commercially with each other with each being free to develop, produce and market different products in their own specific end markets.
Censis chief executive Ian Reid said he expected that the project would create around 40 research and development jobs in Scotland with four times that number of jobs being created indirectly.
The research will focus on producing low-energy use sensors in high volumes at lower costs and with a longer life span than existing products.
If successful in that aim Mr Reid believes that, in the long-term, the project could see semiconductor manufacturing currently carried out in Asia being done in Scotland.
Over ten years, Mr Reid expects, the project will boost turnover for the businesses by £135m as well as boosting the Scottish economy by some £56m in Gross Value Added.
“This project will have a momentous impact on Scottish industry and is a game-changer for collaborative research and development,” he said.
“Not only will it underpin the development of Scotland’s sensors and imaging sector, which already accounts for £2.6 billion in annual revenues, but it will also provide the academic community with access to cutting-edge technology and allow further innovation and collaboration.
“Scotland has the potential to be at the forefront of the global sensors and imaging systems sector, and this project could make that a reality."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here