Midven’s Early Advantage Fund has backed premium manufacturing business Anvil Semiconductors, a University of Warwick spin-out, in a £150,000 fundraising.

Midven’s Early Advantage Fund has backed premium manufacturing business Anvil Semiconductors, a University of Warwick spin-out, in a £150,000 fundraising.
 
The venture capital firm has made a £25,000 investment in Anvil, which launched this month. The company aims to develop smaller, more efficient power converters using innovative silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor switches.
 
Private investors Minerva, the Midlands network of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business angels, also participated in the financing to inject a further £125,000 in the company. Since investment, the company has been awarded a prestigious research and development grant from the Technology Strategy Board.
 
SiC devices are able to withstand higher voltages and currents and are 10-times faster than traditional silicon devices. However, they are also currently 10-times more expensive to produce, a factor which has prevented the material being widely adopted.
 
Anvil claims their semiconductors will enable significant improvements in operating efficiency, size and cost when used in power converters such as those found in electric cars, photovoltaic cells and wind turbines.
 
Anvil chief executive Dr Peter Ward and Professor Phil Mawby’s team at the university’s School of Engineering have developed the company’s technology.
 
Professor Mawby says: ‘Semiconductors have such a vast array of uses in electronic equipment. The technological advances we are introducing to their design have huge potential to reduce our overall energy consumption, through improving the efficiency of electric cars, renewable power generation and the grid.’