The UK just bet £1.2 million that the future of computing, energy, and communications won’t be built on silicon alone. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has been tapped by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to lead a government-funded project that aims to fix a glaring weak spot in Britain’s semiconductor ambitions: the ability to actually measure and verify the exotic new materials that are about to replace silicon.
Compound semiconductors like gallium nitride (GaN), silicon carbide (SiC), and gallium arsenide (GaAs) are already powering everything from EV inverters to 5G base stations. But unlike the mature silicon industry—where standards are as old as the fab—these advanced materials lack the metrology infrastructure needed to guarantee purity, reliability, and performance. That’s a bottleneck, and it’s costing the UK credibility with investors.
The Measurement Gap
NPL’s consortium reads like a who’s who of UK chip innovation: Vishay Newport, Oxford Instruments, Keysight Technologies, the Henry Royce Institute, and a handful of top universities. Their mission is to create new measurement methods for three high-impact areas: power electronics, radio frequency communications, and optoelectronics. In plain English, they’re building the rulers and scales for a new generation of chips.
Take power electronics. The shift to electric vehicles and renewable energy grids demands devices that can handle extreme voltages and temperatures. Right now, there’s no independent way to detect defects during manufacturing or verify reliability under high-voltage stress. That uncertainty makes investors nervous. The same goes for RF chips used in space and defense, where operating frequencies keep climbing, and for optoelectronics, where new light-emitting materials need rigorous characterization before they hit production lines.
Standards as Strategy
This isn’t just a science project—it’s a geopolitical play. “Standards are key,” says Gareth Edwards, head of Advanced Manufacturing and Materials Strategy at NPL. “They provide the framework that ensures reliability, interoperability and confidence across complex supply chains.” By shaping international standards early, the UK can influence how these technologies are adopted globally, attract private investment, and build a supply chain that doesn’t depend on a single dominant player.
The government is betting that metrology—the science of measurement—can be the UK’s wedge into a semiconductor market that has long been dominated by Asia and the US. If NPL succeeds, British startups and scale-ups won’t just be designing next-gen chips; they’ll have the tools to prove they work. That’s the kind of technical credibility that turns a prototype into a product—and a product into an industry.
