A materials technology company spun-out from the University of Birmingham has secured a major financial boost.

Irresistible Materials (IM) has secured £290,000 of further support from its investing shareholder Mercia Fund Management and new business angels from the US and UK.

The move comes as Stuart McIntosh, who has 40 years experience of the semiconductor industry, has been named as the firm’s new chairman.

Mr McIntosh was previously president of ASML, a multi-billion pound company and the one of the world’s leading suppliers of lithography tools to the semiconductor industry.

IM was created in 2010 to further develop and commercialise the University of Birmingham’s photo-resist technology for the next generation of microchips.

Photo-resists are critical materials in the computer chip manufacturing process as they enable chip manufacturers to fabricate ever smaller features for microelectronic devices.

Beyond 2016 current photo-resist technologies cannot be used as these features will be too small for existing polymeric photo-resists, hence the need for a new generation of technology.

IM’s solution, based on a unique fullerene material developed at the University of Birmingham, has been successfully demonstrated to meet these requirements and the company has started engaging with the key industry suppliers to evaluate samples.

Mr McIntosh said: “The semiconductor industry has spent many billions developing EUV technologies for 2016 production lines.

“Recently, ASML, the largest supplier of lithography tools to the global semiconductor markets, publicly announced a significant investment by three of the largest semiconductor companies in the world to support R&D programmes necessary to produce the technologies the industry has laid out in the road map for lithography.

“IM has one of these critical technology components for EUV chip production and I’m pleased and excited to be working with this team of highly motivated people, who have successfully developed a leading technology using Fullerene materials and structures. ”

Everard Mascarenhas of Mercia Fund Management said: “IM has made excellent progress both technically and commercially.

“Along-side the new investment, we are very pleased that the Company has succeeded in attracting an experienced and successful management team to continue the impressive development of the company.”

David Coleman, head of spinout portfolio for the University of Birmingham said: “IM is a great example of the type of spinout company that we develop.

“It has a unique material, proven to meet a critical need in the semiconductor industry, and a very experienced team in place well backed to undertake the next stages of its business plan. ”