In total, the company has raised over £1.26 million, which has been raised through an equity funding round from existing and new investors led by Frontier IP and Wealth Club. A previous funding round, in September last year, raised £1.6 million, valuing the company at £7.2 million.
The money was raised through an Advanced Subscription Agreement, meaning that shares will be issued at a later date, either as part of a future funding round or converted.
CamGraPhIC is developing graphene-based photonics technology for scalable, faster and cheaper optical transceivers, devices at the centre of high-speed data and telecommunications networks.
They have the potential to become a core enabling technology for next generation 5G networks and beyond and the transceivers are also more energy efficient, meaning they are not only cheaper to buy, but also to run.
Other applications will include 6G mm wave which will allow data to be transferred at speeds up to 1 terabit per second, High Performance Computing and networks to handle the demands of artificial intelligence.
According to the company, progress to date has been highly encouraging with current versions of the technology indicating speeds of up to 100Gbps per lane and operation across multiple wavebands. Their speed is about twice that achieved in laboratory conditions by equivalent technologies, while it is projected that they consume 70 per cent less energy.
Proceeds from the latest funding round will be used to complete fabrication and testing of the demonstration devices. The technology has attracted interest from major multinationals in the semiconductor and telecommunications sectors. Customer testing is expected to begin next month, in September 2022.
Graphene is viewed by scientists as having remarkable optoelectronic properties, so it can convert electrical signals to modulated light signals and back at super-fast speeds (100+ gigabits per second), hence its appeal for 5G infrastructure applications.
Paul Mantle, Chief Executive Officer, CamGraPhIC, said: “We are delighted to progress this funding round. Our graphene-based photonics technology has the potential to transform high-speed data and telecommunications. We look forward to evaluating the technology with customers and receiving the first results.”
By next year, it’s estimated there will be over 29 billion internet-connected devices in use around the world and mobile networks are increasingly turning to 5G to accommodate the escalating surge in data traffic. However, it’s expected that current technologies supporting 5G infrastructure may not be able to cope, and a bottleneck is forecast as early as 2023.
CamGraPhIC is aiming to address the issue by developing next-generation graphene/silicon chips that it believes could become a core technology enabling new telecom and datacom devices to operate at the ultra-high speeds and bandwidths 5G increasingly demands – providing superior performance at lower cost.
CamGraPhIC is designing, developing, and manufacturing next-generation GIP for the telecoms and datacoms markets. It’s developed two key product devices, both of which are currently being tested. The underlying graphene-photonics technology, which has a host of further applications, is being developed under license from the University of Cambridge.
