News Article
Carbon nanotubes used in solar industry
Nantero and SVTC make carbon nanotube capability available for next generation electronics. New endeavour brings SVTC's successful semiconductor business model to the solar industry
Nantero, a nanotechnology company using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for the development of next generation semiconductor devices, has announced a collaboration with SVTC Technologies to accelerate the commercialisation of nanotube-based electronics products. Nantero has developed a “CMOS-friendly” proprietary CNT process that it will install at SVTC’s two state of the art development fabs, in San Jose, Calif., and Austin, Texas.
CNTs, cylindrical carbon molecules about a nanometre across and up to a millimetre long, exhibit extraordinary strength, unique electrical properties and efficient heat conduction. Due to their novel properties, CNTs hold tremendous promise for a variety of semiconductor, nanotechnology and optics applications. By making Nantero’s proprietary CNT process available at SVTC’s development fabs, the two companies hope to enable potential licensees of Nantero to develop and commercialise the use of CNT in SVTC’s IP-secure environment.
“By placing our CNT process module at SVTC, we are now able to support multiple co-development relationships across a growing array of CMOS grade CNT devices,” said Greg Schmergel, CEO of Nantero. “Our development partners now have the opportunity to develop CNT products with us in a third party environment utilising state of the art capabilities that will transfer efficiently to their own production environments.”
The companies’ collaboration fits well with SVTC’s broader mission to enable commercialisation of new process and device developments in the semiconductor, MEMS and related nanotechnology domains with support for a direct path between the work completed in SVTC’s facilities to high volume manufacturing. CNTs represent an ideal area for SVTC because currently, there is a huge gap between the promise of carbon nanotubes as demonstrated in research labs and their translation into commercial products that can be manufactured in high volumes.
Together, Nantero and SVTC can offer CNT device development capabilities for customers targeting a wide range of applications including photovoltaics (solar cells), LEDs, sensors, MEMS and other semiconductor based devices.
“SVTC is delighted to welcome Nantero as a partner,” said Dave Bergeron, SVTC’s CEO. “We have seen interest in CNTs coming from a number of companies looking to integrate CNTs with CMOS. Together Nantero and SVTC have the technology and experience to accelerate their efforts.”
