Quinas spinout celebrates first birthday
Initially emerging from a scientific paper on Memory Cells in June 2019 within Lancaster University's Physics Department, the startup Quinas laid the groundwork for ULTRARAM technologies, a cornerstone of its commercial strategy.
Developed by Professor Manus Hayne from the Physics Department, ULTRARAM is a cutting-edge memory technology that leverages the quantum-mechanical "resonant tunnelling" process. This technology achieves rapid, energy-efficient, and durable memory writing and erasing, distinguishing itself from traditional data storage methods like Flash and DRAM.
This pioneering research quickly gained recognition, becoming the second most accessed physics paper and the 41st overall in Scientific Reports, attracting over 26,000 views. ULTRARAM's innovation led to its patent within the same year, and a follow-up paper on its properties was selected as the editor’s choice in Advanced Electronic Materials in 2022.
Quinas was officially formed the following year and has since seen significant achievements. In the past year alone, it was named “Most Innovative Startup” at the Flash Memory Summit in Silicon Valley and received Elektra’s Reader's Choice Award for “University Research Group of the Year.” Quinas also reached the finals for the PraxisAuril KE ‘Commercialisation Achievement of the Year’ and the TechWorks “TechNES Design Award.” Financially, it secured £300,000 in funding through the ICURe Innovate UK programme and attained a second patent in the US, with additional patents pending in Europe, Japan, China, and South Korea.
Speaking of the remarkable year the startup has had, Professor Hayne said: “The anniversary of Quinas’ incorporation is an excellent opportunity to take stock of the progress we have made on ULTRARAM. Working with our national and international partners and supported by UK and European funding, we are advancing on tackling the key technical challenges associated with scaling the technology. We continue to be astonished by ULTRARAM’s remarkable properties.”
The CEO of Quinas, James Ashforth-Pook added: “In its first year, our ULTRARAM universal memory solution has marked a turning point in computing technology, offering a transformative blend of speed, durability, and energy efficiency. ULTRARAM not only overcomes the ‘memory wall’ bottleneck but also enables compute-in-memory processors, significantly reducing compute latency and redefining data storage and processing.”
