West Lothian MEMS equipment firm Point 35 Microstructures has received £2.2m in venture funding.

“Close Ventures put in £1.9m and the rest came from other sources,” spokesman Peter Cannock told EW. “It will help us develop the next applications for our equipment and build a worldwide sales capacity.”

Point 35, through its subsidiary, Memstar, has developed a low-cost plasma-based deposition-etch machine for MEMS manufacturers.

“The MEMS industry did use a lot of wet chemistry, now it is moving to traditional semiconductor manufacturing techniques [dry, plasma], but it cannot afford the sort of equipment the semiconductor industry uses,” said Cannock.

Dry chemistry improves quality and allows MEMS to be combined with silicon electronics.

Described as “not table top, but less than desk-sized”, the basic Memstar handles up to 200mm wafers and is scalable from single-chamber lab-level to production throughput.

“It includes closed-loop control and highly controlled gas flow,” added Cannock.

“The alternative is to adjust current semiconductor equipment down, but this is extremely difficulty and too expensive.”

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