Background

The field of microelectronics is critical for almost every sector of the economy and national security, enabling information and communication technology, consumer electronics, and online businesses. However, the microelectronics industry is facing a significant barrier to innovation due to a lack of affordable access to fabrication foundries for integrated circuits that require advanced processes. One of the main reasons for this is that current electronics manufacturing approaches rely on expensive vacuum-based top-down processes with facilities costing over $16 billion. These conventional fabrication technologies do not allow innovators to take full advantage of the novel and superior properties of various nanomaterials such as quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, nanowires, graphene, and other 2D materials as well as enabling them to print any material on any substrate. There is also a significant environmental impact due to the massive amounts of water and power required to operate a fabrication facility. For example, a typical semiconductor fabrication plant, or fab, uses as much power in a year as about 50,000 homes. They even consume more electricity than auto plants and refineries.

Technology Overview

Northeastern Spinout, Nano OPS, provides a patented, highly versatile nanomanufacturing platform for additive manufacturing at the nanoscale using a variety of materials on any substrate. They are developing a new micro and nanoscale manufacturing platform that can be implemented as a single tool-line to print heterogeneously integrated micro and nanoscale circuits. Nano OPS printing equipment delivers a platform to the manufacturers of electronics, displays, micro-electromechanical systems, and sensors a disruptive solution to make high-end products at substantially lower capital and manufacturing costs. This printing technology is capable of manufacturing fully functional electronic devices at significantly lower cost (10x-100x) and with higher throughput (10x-100x). It can also significantly lower resource burdens and hazards compared to current fabrication technologies.

Nano OPS offers two products to enable ultra-low-cost development and manufacturing of IoT, 5G, Edge Computing, wearables, and future tech:

• Flex RD is designed to print flexible electronics at a low cost and with high throughput.
• FFx800 RD is a fully integrated Fab-in-a-tool. This allows customers to create nano and microscale electronics from CAD drawings. This is the only machine that can take a CAD file and deliver a completed product down to a micron scale.

Benefits

• 10x-100x lower cost of manufacturing
• 10x-100x lower resource burdens
• Easy to integrate single-tool line printing of heterogeneously integrated micro and nanoscale circuits

Applications

Manufacturing of:

• Electronics
• Displays
• MEMS
• Sensors
• IoT
• 5G
• Wearables
• Conductors, semiconductors, dielectrics and nanomaterials for a variety of micro and nanoelectronics.

Opportunity

Marketing and Design Materials, Connecting with prospective investors