Prototyping Facility
The IBI hosts a 1,800 m² Prototyping Facility located in the northeast corner of the University’s West Cambridge site. The facility offers access to tools for component fabrication, metrology and testing, as well as device assembly and packaging, within a combination of cleanroom and standard laboratory spaces. A dedicated tissue culture laboratory supports in vitro validation and biocompatibility testing, while a human performance laboratory enables on‑site evaluation of wearable technologies with healthy volunteers.
Access to the Prototyping Facility is managed through a structured user programme that includes safety training, tool qualification, and cleanroom compliance. Following certification, users may operate equipment independently or work under staff supervision. Facility staff provide user training, technical support, and process development guidance.
The Prototyping Facility is organised as follows:
- Bay 1 is a Class 100 cleanroom dedicated to photolithography and pattern transfer for micro- and nanoscale component fabrication. It supports reproducible, high-precision lithographic processing for prototyping, process development, and limited-volume manufacturing within a rigorously controlled environment.
- Bay 2 is a Class 10,000 cleanroom equipped for thin-film deposition, surface modification, wet processing, and metrology, providing comprehensive support for device fabrication, integration, and packaging.
- Bay 3 is a Class 10,000 cleanroom offering advanced capabilities for plasma processing, laser marking, and nanoscale imaging and patterning to enable high-resolution micro- and nanofabrication.
- Bay 4 is a Containment Level 1 biological laboratory providing infrastructure and equipment for the preparation, maintenance, and analysis of mammalian cell cultures.
- The formulation laboratory supports the safe preparation and handling of chemical formulations, equipped with two chemical fume hoods for controlled handling of volatile or hazardous substances.
- Standard laboratory spaces house equipment for additive manufacturing, metrology and testing, and packaging and validation.
- The Human Performance Laboratory supports on-site validation of wearable biomedical technologies using healthy volunteers, enabling testing at rest or during physical activity. It is equipped for simultaneous multi-modal physiological monitoring, including EEG, ECG, blood pressure, sweat analysis, and other metrics.