Abington, England – The United Kingdom (UK) Department of Trade and Industry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council have funded a new program called Electronics and Photonics Packaging and InterConnection (EPPIC), through the Faraday Partnership scheme. Faraday Partnerships are intended to strengthen the way various technologies are developed and exploited within the UK, by stimulating better interactions between researchers and companies developing new products.
The EPPIC program brings together seven UK research partners, two of which are research and technology organizations (RTOs). These are TWI (formerly the Welding Institute; Abington, England) and the International Tin Research Institute Ltd (Uxbridge, England). The balance includes five universities: Sheffield, Durham, Leeds, Heriot-Watt (Edinburgh, Scotland), and Cambridge. In addition, there are more than 20 industrial companies actively involved in the Industry Steering Group, which will direct key activities and have access to all core research results generated from partnership programs.
The EPPIC will coordinate the UK's research effort on packaging, interconnects, and manufacturing processes for the electronics and photonics sectors. It will direct programs into priority areas, such as packaging and interconnects for products that require any combination of high speed, high power, harsh environment, integrated optical and electronic, high density, and high reliability. Low-cost packaging will also be considered. The partners see the formation of the EPPIC Faraday Partnership as recognition of the fundamental importance of packaging technology in the electronics and photonics sectors, and its impact on product and company viability.
Faraday Partnerships are managed using intermediate organizations with strong connections in both industry and academia, such as RTOs, universities, government agencies, or private sector laboratories. So far, seventeen Faraday Partnerships have been set up since the scheme started in 1997.