Category Archives: LEDs

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LONDONDERRY, N.H., Sept. 22, 2003  — Sure, every company is supposed to focus on its business opportunity with laser-like intensity. At NanoVia Inc., however, they take that saying literally.

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The company’s expertise is simple enough: drilling extremely small holes into extremely small objects. Using a patented technology that employs the same type of optics used to make holograms, NanoVia fires powerful lasers at microstructures to sculpt them into carefully aligned vias or other shapes.

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Vias are the tiny pathways that allow electrons to travel from one part of a MEMS device to another, or to allow various MEMS components to fit together.

Talent with a laser is a valuable skill in small technology, and it has led to a raft of business opportunities for the seven-man shop. NanoVia works with a Hitachi Inc. subsidiary to bolt microchips onto computers; it collaborates with health researchers to make micro-nozzles for inhalable drugs. The company even has a grant from the state of California to explore the idea of stamping serial numbers onto bullets as they are fired from a gun.

Todd Lizotte, vice president of R&D for NanoVia, says the strategy has been to focus on a strong technology platform of laser-based micro machining — then strike partnerships with other groups that had a specific application in mind. The company now has several million in revenues annually and has been profitable for most of its four-year history.

“We focus on our core,” Lizotte explains, “not the nuts-and-bolts stuff you can get anywhere.”

Using lasers to sculpt microstructures is common enough. NanoVia’s twist is in the technology of the laser itself. Its device uses diffractive optics, rather than the more common refractive optics. Diffraction is harder to manage because light particles scatter in several directions. But when properly corralled into one beam, it delivers more photons to the target than refraction, consequently taking less time to make more precise structures.

Orest Ohar, NanoVia’s head of engineering, said diffraction lets NanoVia operate its lasers at frequencies of 40 KHz or more, much higher than the standard 15Khz. That extra energy lets the laser carve a target more quickly. Still, he conceded, most engineers “don’t want to worry about what they believe to be the problems of diffractive optics.”

Mike Rodgers, principal engineer with Optical Research Associates in Pasadena, said NanoVia’s diffractive approach lets it make large volumes of products essentially by stamping the shape onto components quickly.

“It just takes special design and has to be manufactured well,” said Rodgers, who helped perfect the design for NanoVia. “If you can make it work, diffractive can be very rewarding.”

One example, and a prime source of business for NanoVia, is the microchip. As chip size increases from 200mm to 300mm, those larger chips require many more vias to bolt the chip to its packaging — around 8,000 vias for an old Pentium II, versus 40,000 vias for a cutting-edge Itanium today.

NanoVia demonstrated its technology to Hitachi Via Mechanics in the spring of 2000. Hitachi quickly signed on as an anchor customer, licensing the technology to drill holes 20 to 70 microns wide so it can bolt larger chips onto motherboards.

“The market that turned out to be most ready for us was the microvia,” Lizotte said. The company quickly leveraged that business to explore other markets.

In the life sciences, NanoVia works with a research group funded by the National Institutes of Health to develop a device that will let people inhale drugs much like asthmatics do now. NanoVia makes the nozzles that will dispense drugs one molecule at a time, so they can flow deeper into the lungs and reach the bloodstream more quickly. The nozzles are 1 to 3 microns wide, etched on a plate in formations of 100 to 1,000. 

NanoVia also dabbles in waveguides, inkjet nozzles and other markets. One intriguing application is the ballistic “NanoTag,” where lasers etch a gun’s serial number onto its firing pin. When the gun is fired, the pin imprints that serial number onto a bullet’s shell casing — giving police an easy way to identify what gun was used at a shooting.

Lizotte and Ohar, who say they are firearms hobbyists, add the NanoTag letters are only 20 microns tall. For just about every bullet on the market today, Ohar says, that leaves “a lot of room to put information in there.”

NanoVia is in a pilot program now with the California Department of Justice to test the NanoTags. Lizotte said preliminary results should be available by January.

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Company file: NanoVia Inc.
(last updated Sept. 8, 2003)

Company
NanoVia LP 


Headquarters
4 Delta Drive, Unit 6
Londonderry, NH 03053

History
Formed in July 1999, NanoVia introduced its first product in April 2000 and established a licensing partnership with Hitachi Via Mechanics in May 2001.

Industry
Laser micro-engineering equipment

Employees
7

Small tech-related products and services
With proprietary diffractive optic technology similar to that used for creating holograms, NanoVia develops and manufactures laser-based microvia equipment and technology. The company offers both turnkey solutions and technology licensing.

Applications for NanoVia’s technology include: microchips, nozzles, waveguides, and potentially “nanotags”, which could place extremely small labels on items such as bullets for identification purposes.

Management
Todd Lizotte: co-founder and vice president of research & development
Orest Ohar: co-founder and head of engineering

Investment history
Investors in NanoVia include a group of former Microsoft executives.

Selected strategic partners and customers

  • Hitachi Via Mechanics

  • State of California

Selected competitors

  • Electro Scientific Industries

  • Aguila Technologies

  • Anvik Corporation

  • Clark-MXR

  • Exitech

  • Gateway Laser Services

  • GSI Lumonics

Barriers to market
NanoVia must convince engineers that diffractive optic-based systems will not prove to be more unwieldy or difficult to use than refractive optic technology.

Relevant patents
Control system for ablating high-density array of vias or indentation in surface of object

Contact
URL: http://www.nanovia.com/
Tel: 603-421-0713
Fax: 603-421-0214
Email: [email protected]

Research by Gretchen McNeely

IBM opts for CVD low-k solution


September 19, 2003

September 18, 2003 – Although IBM Microelectronics had previously demonstrated “manufacturing success” using an enhanced version of Dow Chemical’s SiLK inter-level low-k dielectric resin, the company has decided to opt for a CVD low-k approach to satisfy the wishes of customers.

IBM is “going with a CVD solution at 90nm as a business decision,” said Marc McClear, global business director, semiconductor fab materials at The Dow Chemical Co. “It was a decision driven by new business needs, attendant to (IBM’s) new customers and new partners.”

As previously reported (see WaferNews, V10n18, May 5, 2003), IBM had demonstrated “manufacturing success” in both 200mm and 300mm fabs for 130nm and 90nm nodes. An IBM development engineer presented data that showed the viability of SiLK D resin at Dow’s SiLKnet Alliance Summit in April.

IBM spokesperson Scott Sykes confirmed the decision had been made to use CVD. “We have done pioneering work with SiLK, we’ve shipped parts made with SiLK, but the economics have dictated that a new technology needs broad support to make it viable,” he said. “It’s not an IBM choice, it’s somewhat of an industry choice.”

Chartered takes wraps off 90nm


September 19, 2003

September 18, 2003 – Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing has taken the wraps off its “NanoAccess” 90nm SoC process technology, based on its development work with IBM.

Now available are a design manual and SPICE simulation models for the technologies, which feature up to 9 Cu layers with full low-k and FTEOS, and an optional triple gate oxide capability.

Initial process qualification for FTEOS and low-k dieletrics is scheduled for 1Q04; multi-project wafer runs are slated for October of this year, using masks from Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd., with Toppan Printing Co. Ltd. currently being qualified.

Chartered has also formed a NanoAccess alliance, led by 15 companies offering IP, design, and manufacturing services for the 90nm technology.

Nantero wins funding


September 11, 2003

September 9, 2003 – Nantero, Woburn, MA, a developer of nonvolatile random access memory (NRAM) chips using nanotechnology, has completed a second round of investments totaling $10.5 million. The round was led by charles River Ventures, along with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Stata Venture Partners, and Harris & Harris Group.

Among Nantero’s NRAM prototypes is an array of ten billion suspended nanotube junctions as memory bits on a single silicon wafer, created using standard semiconductor processes.

September 9, 2003 – Triquint Semiconductor, Hillsboro, Oregon, and Amkor Technology, Chandler, AZ, are collaborating on a low-cost low-cost flip-chip assembly process for gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors.

The technology utilizes Triquint’s CuFlip copper bumping technology to link contact points to the substrate. The process has led to a 40% reduction in size for Triquint’s 6x6mm 7M4009 GSM power amplifier module.

Sapphire substrates for LEDs


September 11, 2003

September 9, 2003 – Japanese company Shoko says it will sell sapphire substrates used in blue and white LEDs in Japan and Taiwan, according to Chemical Busienss News. Iljin Diamond of South Korea will produce the 2-in.- and 3-in.-diameter substrates, with technology used for processing lithium tantalate wafers.

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Sept. 3, 2003 — In 1999, Ed Moran’s assessment of nanotechnology’s future led him to register nanobusiness.com as a domain name. Two years later, he heard about the launch of the NanoBusiness Alliance and contacted the founders, who had already

registered nanobusiness.org.

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Moran was so impressed with Nathan Tinker’s and Mark Modzelewski’s vision that he eventually agreed to turn over nanobusiness.com to the fledgling trade association.

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Today, both Moran and the alliance founders are building nanotech consulting businesses. Moran is running a practice at Deloitte & Touche, while Tinker and Modzelewski set up the NanoBusiness Development Group (NBDG), the alliance’s for-profit consulting arm, in fall 2002.

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Deloitte is working with companies such as Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. and organizations like the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium, while NBDG is helping a Fortune 500 chemical company develop its nanotech strategy, and has done similar work for government groups in Canada and Japan.

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The two fledgling consulting practices are not alone. Other firms, including Cientifica Ltd. in Europe, nABACUS Limited in Hong Kong, and Sygertech Consulting Group Inc. of Montreal, Quebec, want to help guide companies to nano’s promised land, for a fee of course.

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Stephen Glapa, for instance, started In Realis in Milpitas, Calif., to help scientists find commercial applications for their nanotech research. But with venture funding tight, he notes, few small companies are willing to open their wallets to business consultants now. In the meantime, Glapa has been developing nanoreference.com, an online guide to nanomaterials for engineers and scientists.

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At Deloitte, where Moran holds the unusual title of director of product innovation, the lawyer-turned-venture capitalist-turned-nanotech-business-builder has been charged with identifying new technologies important to clients. “Nanotechnology is at the root of many industries and very relevant to Deloitte’s tech clients,” said Moran, who also noted that developing nanotech expertise is giving the firm an opportunity to innovate beyond its core accounting practices.

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Tinker said the NBDG’s goal is to help large companies and organizations make sense of nanotech, as well as to connect small companies and startups with bigger corporate players. A chemical company NBDG is working with came to Tinker with a variety of aims: to better identify opportunities for partnerships and acquisitions and to learn which types of nanomaterials might enhance the optical or physical properties of products it already makes, such as paint, coatings and textiles.

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The company also wanted to get a better handle on how its intellectual property and patents stood up against competitors.

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To help clients assess technology, NBDG relies on an ad hoc group, “our brain trust,” said Tinker, composed of Versilant Nanotechnologies Inc. founder Cynthia Kuper, Northwestern University professor Rod Ruoff, and Don Freed, a former executive at Nanophase Technologies Corp.

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Moran said his group at Deloitte aims to enable clients, particularly small tech companies founded by scientists, improve their overall business practices.

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In particular, he said, young small tech companies need to understand where their products fit into industry road maps and industrial processes. As a global company, Deloitte can help startups forge partnerships and connections with the right companies, according to Moran.

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“With venture money scarce, small tech companies have to generate revenue soon,” Moran added. “We can help them get their business focused faster.”

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Alan Marty, the executive-in-residence at JP Morgan Partners who is managing the firm’s nanotech investments, said that consulting services or an institutional venture capital group like JPMP can support a startup’s main challenge: making the transition from a science culture to a business culture.

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“Of course, hiring an experienced CEO with lots of contacts can also help,” said Marty. Most companies probably end up using a combination of all these avenues, he said.

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Peter Hébert, a co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital, said the market for nanotechnology consulting services is just beginning to form. “We’re only now starting to see people from top consulting companies at nanotech conferences and events.” In his view, the greatest demand for consulting services now comes from large companies willing (and financially able) to outsource strategic expertise to formulate their nano plans.

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Meanwhile, the big traditional consulting firms appear to be taking their time to formulate their own efforts in nanotech. A few, such as Booz Allen Hamilton and McKinsey & Co., are reportedly working to help clients such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration make sense of the nano landscape. A McKinsey & Co. study cited in the Chicago Tribune last year identified biomedical technology and nanotechnology as promising for city investment.

August 19, 2003 – German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron has signed a multi-year agreement to provide LED production equipment to Lumileds, a JV between Agilent and Philips, The Netherlands. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but Aixtron sad it has already sold one system, which typically sells for $1.5 million-$1.7 million, and will deliver more over the next few years.

AUG. 21–ROCKVILLE, Md–In a 5-part strategic action plan entitled “Protecting and Advancing America’s Health: A Strategic Action Plan for the 21st Century,” the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today outlined how it is taking new steps to protect and advance public health for America.

The plan, which sets some new specific actions and performance measures directly related to achieving FDA’s public health mission, establishes a framework for achieving five broad priority goals for FDA.

The action plan is not an exhaustive list of the agency’s many ongoing regulatory activities; rather, it highlights some of the specific steps that the FDA is taking to address new challenges facing the agency.

“Today, we need a strong and effective FDA more than ever. This strategic action plan is our coordinated effort to respond to some of the most challenging threats and opportunities for public health that we have ever faced,” said FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan.

The goals outlined in the strategic plan flow directly from the public health priorities established by President George W. Bush and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson. These broad strategic directions represent our conclusions about how to maximize the public health impact of every FDA dollar and of our greatest resource, the thousands of dedicated professionals at the FDA.”

1) Efficient, Science-Based Risk Management

FDA has long led the world in applying the principles of risk management ¿ assessing public health risks, analyzing methods for reducing them, and taking appropriate action. Today, with the expanding complexity of the agency’s food and medical challenges and the need to reduce the health risks facing the public at the lowest cost to society, efficient risk management is more important than ever.

The agency’s approach to efficient risk management requires the use of the most current biomedical, statistical, managerial, and economic science. By employing principles and technologies that can reduce avoidable delays and cost in product approvals, by overhauling and updating the way medical products are manufactured, by implementing more effective strategies for food imports and food safety, and by implementing an enforcement strategy that combines clear communications to industry backed up by effective civil and criminal enforcement, FDA will achieve quicker access to safe and effective new products, and reduced public health risks without unnecessary costs.

2) Patient and Consumer Safety.

Too many American’s suffer from preventable adverse events related to medical products, dietary supplements, and foods, resulting in many billions of dollars in avoidable medical costs each year.

Consequently, FDA is enhancing its “post-market” monitoring, communication, and regulatory activities. In addition, one of the most promising new ways the FDA can improve its system for reporting safety problems is to have direct and secure access to relevant modern electronic health information. By supplementing the current passive reporting systems and partnering with healthcare providers and other government agencies, FDA will develop more innovative and effective information on the risks associated with FDA-regulated products. Through steps such as bar coding medications and implementing new, 21st-century methods for communicating with health professionals to reduce adverse events, FDA will help speed the implementation of safer systems for medical care and foods.

3) Better Informed Consumers

Informed consumers represent our Nation’s greatest public health asset, because the choices that people make every day can have a great impact on their own health and the health of the nation. Providing consumers with all the tools they need to make better-informed choices about how to use their health care dollars, and protecting them from misleading information that wastes their money and effort, is of utmost importance to the agency.

FDA is undertaking major new efforts to ensure consumers have the most up-to-date, truthful information on the benefits and risks of FDA regulated products. In this arena, FDA fulfills two complementary roles: ensuring that the information sponsors provide about products is accurate and allows for their safe use, and communicating directly with the public concerning benefits and risks of products FDA regulates.

FDA’s strategic plan calls for the agency to learn more about how to communicate with consumers more effectively about risks and benefits. The goal is a well-informed public, empowered to make better choices to improve their health.

4) Counterterrorism

As the nation’s leading agency in protecting the security of the nation’s food, FDA is improving its capability to assess and respond effectively to risks associated with threats to harm Americans through the food they eat. As FDA recently reported, the Agency is working with other government agencies and the private sector to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to protect the food supply from attack. These include additional staff for food safety field activities, greater import presence at our nation’s borders, threat assessments, and additional money for food security research. FDA’s medical product centers are also working harder and more creatively than ever to speed the availability of the next generation of safer, more effective countermeasures to protect Americans against biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological agents of terrorism.

5) A Strong FDA.

FDA’s continued ability to carry out its mission of protecting and advancing America’s health, rests squarely on its most important resource: a talented and dedicated staff. “Only with a strong workforce, armed with the tools and resources needed to get the job done, will FDA be able do the job Americans deserve and expect,” said McClellan. FDA is taking additional steps to improve retention and training, and is implementing new activities to augment the agency’s capabilities through use of outside experts and collaborations. FDA is also implementing steps toward completing the consolidation of much of its work force in a new campus in White Oak, Maryland.

“The strategic action plan we are announcing today will set the tone and provide direction for our public health work in the months and years to come,” added Dr. McClellan. “We are laying out key strategic goals, so that all FDA constituents will know what to expect from us, so they will be able to evaluate progress we are making toward those public health goals, and so they can all participate with us in the process.”

Additional information about FDA’s strategic plan, including a list of key action items and objectives, is available online at:

http: //www.fda.gov/oc/mcclellan/strategic.html

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Aug. 21, 2003 — A nanomaterial-based compound designed to reclaim land lost to forest fires is getting its first major workout in challenging weather.

“We’re dodging thunderstorms every day,” said Richard Maile, president of Sequoia Pacific Research Co. LLC, speaking on a mobile phone in the mountains near Taos, N.M., last week. “That presents a certain obstacle but other than that, it’s going pretty much as planned.”

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A fire caused by lightning last month scorched more than 5,000 acres of forest and the Taos Pueblo Native American tribe’s Encebado Mountain. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) selected Sequoia’s patent-pending nanoengineered organic material to drop on 1,400 acres of charred land. The agency hopes the material will bind to the soil to protect it from erosion and stimulate growth. A BIA official told the Albuquerque Journal that the contract, signed with Aero Tech Inc. of Clovis, N.M., was worth nearly $4 million.

Maile said this is the first major application of Sequoia’s soil binder, a nanostructured matrix of organic, biodegradable concentrate called SoilSET. Once the concentrate has been mixed with water, an electrochemical reaction creates an organic binder at the nanoscale, which sticks to soil to retain water. It also reduces runoff and helps germinate seeds.

Since Aug. 1, Utah-based Sequoia has been working with Aero Tech and Oregon-based Erickson Air-Crane, which has used a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft to apply the product. Maile said the technique is similar to aerial hydroseeding, but the organic binder offers “heightened functionality,” which means, among other things, that it lasts longer and can withstand harsh weather.

Although the company is using the Taos project as its official commercial launch, the material has been studied for several years. SoilSET was field-tested in March 2002 on a burn area in California’s Mendocino National Forest.

Bob Faust, Mendocino’s forest hydrologist, said Sequoia and Erickson Air-Crane treated two locations on six acres of a steep dry drainage area where erosion occurs. The application included 500 pounds of product and 2,000 gallons of water — a job that would have taken 3,500 gallons with other methods.

Faust said his evaluation one month later found no evidence of growth because of a lack of rain, but the material was still sticking to the soil. At six months, the evaluators found new growth coming up through the binder.  Although the material had dissolved after one year — and a three-day spell of storms that left 10 inches of rain — Faust said it could be useful if applied with seeds before the rainy season. That way, the ground cover could grow before the mulch disappears.

“There’s no current method to stabilize the banks — not on a large basis,” he said. “It’s encouraging …the way the product stayed on the slope.”

Mendocino botanist David Isle said Sequoia’s soil binder was effective at holding the soil, which is crucial for new growth. But some annual plants native to the area had trouble breaking through the binder’s hard layer. He said that compromise could be overcome with a zebra approach on large slopes — alternate 50-100-foot swaths of treated and untreated land that could work together to protect soil and encourage biodiversity.

Sequoia officials also commissioned a study at University of Nevada, Reno. Biochemistry professor Grant Cramer, the researcher who tested the prospective product, said it helped to keep soil together and enhanced moisture retention.

Those and other tests led Maile to form what was Zion Pacific Research Co. 2 1/2 years ago with Chief Executive Terry Holmes and Chief Technology Officer Larry Rogers, who developed the nanosilicate crystallization technology. Zion changed its name to Sequoia earlier this year.

The privately held company also spun off a separate unit called Sierra Pacific Research Company, which uses the same technology for a non-toxic concentrate intended to kill anthrax and other biological threats.

Sequoia officials said they intend SoilSET to be the first of five nano-based products, including radioactive waste disposal as well as synthetic solid fuels and building materials. The firm does not intend to manufacture the nanosilicate technology; rather it seeks to market and license it to “mature global markets.”

Although he’s unfamiliar with Sequoia’s technology, it appears useful and effective to Kevin Ausman, executive director of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University.

“Nano is so new that you have to evaluate it very carefully. … It’s certainly true that any new applications that demonstrate an improvement to the environment, such as soil binding, can help significantly with the environmental currency of nanotech,” he said.

“It sounds like a very safe application, and probably very good for the field.”