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Nov. 12, 2004 – Atomate Corp. has decided to put the theory of building better mousetraps to the test. Now the question is whether the nanotechnology world will beat a path to its door.
The 10-person startup, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., has foregone the usual dreams of nanoscale manufacturing for a more practical macroscale market: the making of nano-fabrication equipment. Atomate has developed its own line of products to meet the special needs of the nanotech industry, where souped-up gear borrowed from the semiconductor falls short.
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“It’s something in which we have tremendous expertise, and we saw the promise in it,” said Brian Lim, Atomate’s chief executive officer. “We have a lot of knowledge about process and synthesis.”
Process and synthesis certainly are two sore spots for nanotech researchers. Most labs trying to churn out nanotubes and nanowires, which Atomate considers its prime customer base, work with chemical-vapor deposition equipment originally designed to make semiconductors. Industry standards have not yet emerged, so most labs resort to cobbling together their own solutions by trial-and-error.
Atomate traces its origins to NanoDevices Inc., a maker of atomic-force microscope equipment where Lim and most of Atomate management worked until Veeco Instruments Inc. acquired the business in 2003. From his days at NanoDevices, “we saw a lot of frustrations in our customers,” Lim said, and the group decided another equipment company could address that need.
For example, academic researchers trying to grow nanotubes in a specific size or shape typically go through many iterations to perfect the process; at the heart of their CVD systems is a quartz furnace to forge the tubes. One common choice is a so-called “straight quartz” chamber, low-cost, but it also tends to leak and ruin the process.
Atomate tweaked the furnace design to include a vacuum-tight seal between the quartz chamber and the metal flanges, essentially an airlock to prevent any leaks. “We know all the top researchers who have spent weeks trying to plug that leak,” Lim said.
Nanotubes and nanowires are logical markets to pursue. Research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that the nanotube market alone will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 98 percent in coming years, pushing the worldwide market from $10 million in 2001 to $540 million by 2007.
The firm does not yet track the market for nanotube-making equipment, nor does it have any data on the potential market for nanowires of gold or other metals. Analyst Deepa Doraiswamy, however, believes that CVD equipment will emerge as the method of choice, at least in the short-term, for nanotube manufacture.
“It’s influenced by the fact that for certain applications such as filed emission, it’s imperative to control the yield of the synthesized CNT,” Doraiswamy said. “CVD has exhibited better control on localized growth than the other processes like arc discharge and laser ablation.”
Still, how many people will embrace nanotube-manufacturing gear is uncertain. David Carnahan, chief executive of Boston-based NanoLab Inc., http://www.nano-lab.com/ which uses CVD equipment to make its own tubes, said he suspects many startups (including his) like the freedom of building their own equipment.
“They’re much more likely to piece together their own,” Carnahan said. “Flexibility is key.”
The more likely customers, which Atomate is attacking first, are academic research centers and large corporate labs. Those institutions are willing to spend the money to commit to nanotech research. What’s more, they often give an equipment grant to new hires “and this offers them a painless way to get into the game,” Carnahan said.
Lim said Atomate already has 30 customers and several hundred thousand dollars in revenue. He reported “tremendous interest” from Asia, where Atomate already has distributors lined up in South Korea and Japan, and added that he expects to start turning a profit this year.
A linchpin for Atomate’s technology will be its ability to scale up to industrial-volume demand. Lim is optimistic: methods to scale up bulk manufacture of nanotubes are well understood, and “that we can do pretty easily.”
More complex structures give him pause. Lim said Atomate equipment can make a nanostructure on a 1-centimeter-square substrate, but churning out scores of them on an industry-standard, six-inch-square wafer “is still very difficult.” He hopes to improve those technologies as demand for nanotech grows in the future.
Company
Atomate Corp.
Headquarters
711 Bond Ave.
Santa Barbara, Calif. 93103
History
When working as employees at NanoDevices (prior to its 2003 acquisition), Atomate CEO Brian Lim and his colleagues saw an opportunity to meet the capital equipment needs of the nanotech community. The company is initially targeting university research centers and corporate laboratories.
Industries potentially served
- Capital equipment
- Nanomaterials
Selected small tech-related products and services
Atomate has created a line of equipment for use in the manufacturing of nanotubes, nanowires and other nanoscale structures. These tools and components could potentially replace systems “borrowed” from the semiconductor industry; such systems often require adjustments before they can meet the requirements of nanotech-focused manufacturing. Atomate also offers nanoscale catalyst materials.
Employees
10
Management
- Brian Lim: chief executive officer
- Thomas Tombler: chief technical officer
- Jon Lai: vice president of product development
- Lam Vuong: vice president of quality assurance
Selected strategic partners, customers
None named, though the company states that it already has 30 customers.
Selected competitors
- 4Wave Inc.
- Focal Point Microsystems
- Veeco
- Zyvex
Barriers to market
Although Atomate is addressing a clear market need, it remains to be seen whether nanotube and nanowire manufacturers will prefer to buy outside systems or choose to develop their own in-house equipment. Additionally, moving beyond nanotube manufacturing equipment to systems for large-scale production of more complicated nanostructures will be challenging.
Contact
- URL: http://atomate.com/
- Tel: (805) 963-1779
- Fax: (805) 435-1951
- Email: [email protected]
Research by Gretchen McNeely