Sheffield University

Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council National Centre for III-V Technologies

Background

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK Government’s leading funding agency for research and training in engineering and the physical sciences. It invests more than £400 million a year in world-class research that forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and leads to improvements in everyone’s health, personal well-being and lifestyle. EPSRC also actively promotes public awareness of science and engineering.

The EPSRC National Centre for Group III-V Semiconductor Technologies was established in 1978 and is now the main provider of III-V semiconductor materials for the UK academic community. It acts as a centre of excellence in the fields of growth, materials characterisation and device processing of these semiconductors, its primary role being in the supply of a wide range of well characterised III-V epitaxial layers to the community. The service also includes a comprehensive range of prototype device fabrication.

The Centre is located in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield, having particularly close links with the Solid State Devices and Materials Group within that department.

The device fabrication facilities expanded rapidly in 1983 to a point today where it has capabilities to produce a wide range of electronic and optoelectronic devices.

Business Plan and Objectives

Key to the business service delivery of the EPSRC National Centre for III-V Technologies is the monitoring and reporting of progress to customers and funding providers through the Growth and Device Fabrication database.

The facility managers wanted to achieve two things.

consolidate and rationalise the database application that had grown over the years
create a secure access via the internet for customers of the Centre to view their device growth records

Key to all of the work was the need to deliver security, robustness and maintainability in the application.

Entity’s Role

Entity’s role was firstly to provide analysis and project management to review the current applications, then to design and build the consolidated internal database application, which was then used as the basis for designing and building a secure web facing reporting tool for customers of the Centre.

Entity provides ongoing support based on pre-purchased timeblocks. The Centre has used these timeblocks to assist its rollout and deployment programme. In going forward, the support resource will be used to complete further investigations into the system function and implement changes or enhancements.

The Solution

The Growth and Device Fabrication database handles low volumes of transactions and has a small number of users. The main criteria for choosing a solution were security, robustness, maintainability and re-use of existing developments. The solution was implemented with on Microsoft Visual Basic and Access technologies, taking advantage of the existing investment in software licences and infrastructure.

The Benefits to Sheffield University

The Centre has gained a solution to the management and reporting of the crystal growth that is:

robust
cost effective
easy to maintain
secure
available securely via the Internet to provide customers with up to date self service information

For more information on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council National Centre for III-V Technologies at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, at the University of Sheffield.

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