Teesside joins £3m-backed North East nanofabrication network

Work measured in millionths of a metre could open much larger opportunities for Teesside researchers and businesses when a new North East nanofabrication network begins operating next year.

Teesside University has joined Newcastle, Durham, Northumbria and Sunderland universities in the Great Northeast Nanofab. The partnership is intended to make specialist facilities and expertise easier to reach across institutional boundaries, rather than expecting every research group or company to build the same expensive capability.

Small devices, wide applications

Nanofabrication involves making structures and devices at an extremely small scale. The methods can be relevant to sensors, electronics, energy technology, medicine and advanced materials, where the behaviour of a tiny component may determine how a much larger product performs.

Equipment used for this work needs tightly controlled environments and highly trained operators. A regional network can therefore offer more than a directory of machines. It can help a business or researcher identify the right process, work with specialists and move an idea from an early experiment towards something that can be tested in practice.

The initiative is led by Newcastle University. A £3 million government grant is being matched through support from Newcastle University and 20 companies, according to Teesside University’s announcement. The network is due to open in January 2027, so it should be understood as a funded plan now being developed rather than a service that is already fully operational.

A place for Teesside expertise

Professor David Hughes represented Teesside University in the announcement. The Middlesbrough institution brings experience in areas including industrial research and collaboration with businesses, which could help connect nanoscale techniques with the region’s strengths in manufacturing, energy and the transition to lower-carbon industry.

That link to companies is important. Advanced research programmes can sound remote from day-to-day production, particularly when the subject involves structures too small to see. Their practical value emerges when a more sensitive sensor, a tougher coating or a new electronic component solves a real problem.

The network also creates a route for skills to circulate around the North East. Postgraduate researchers and technical staff can learn across sites, while firms that have never worked with a university cleanroom may gain a clearer starting point.

There will still be questions to answer as the January launch approaches, including how companies gain access, what projects the network will prioritise and how success will be measured. The announcement does not mean every promising idea will become a product.

Shared access could be especially valuable for smaller firms. A company may have a strong product idea without the budget or specialist staff to operate nanoscale equipment alone. A regional route into facilities and advice can let it test the important technical question before committing much larger sums.

The months before opening will show how that promise is turned into a practical access model.

It does, however, place Teesside inside a serious regional effort to share costly infrastructure and make high-level science useful beyond a single laboratory. In a region accustomed to working at industrial scale, the next opportunity may begin with something smaller than a speck of dust.