LA Start-up aims to shake up compound semi market
Carbonics, a venture-backed Los Angeles start-up, has launched its ZEBRA single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT)-on-silicon technology.
Aimed at RF applications, the technology is said to be 30 times more linear than GaAs; 1000 times better in power than GaAs; 100 percent CMOS compatible; and able to cut component cost by 50 percent.Â
With the launch of its ZEBRA wafers, Carbonics says it wants to give design engineers, foundries, and device manufacturers access to the best and most advanced semiconducting platform for designing next-generation high speed circuits.
"Carbonics intends to shake up the billion-dollar compound semiconductor market with our superior disruptive carbon technology that is fully CMOS compatible and able to perform in the mmWave spectrum - representing perfect timing for the 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) revolution," said Carbonics CEO Kos Galatsis.
"Carbonics has achieved a unique milestone in the evolution of carbon electronics," said Ken Hansen, president and CEO of Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)."This is a crucial first step from Carbonics toward high performance, next-generation RF electronics using next-generation nanotechnology for high performance mmWave RF and CMOS compatibility. It's exciting to see the progress from the fundamental material and device research sponsored by SRC and DARPA develop into the launch of a groundbreaking product technology."
The ZEBRA wafer product line includes the ZEBRA BOLT with aligned semiconducting CNT on 15nm SiO2 for backgated device applications such as sensors and detectors; the ZEBRA DASH with aligned semiconducting CNT on 1500nm for top-gated devices such as memory, switch, logic and RF applications covering L-Band to mmWave and 3G, 4G, 4G, WiFi, 802.11ad and WiGig spectrums; and the ZEBRA SPRINT with aligned semiconducting CNT on quartz aimed for RF applications up to 100GHz.Â
Carbonics also plans to launch its VIPER product line made up of high performance RF devices and integrated amplifiers in 2017 and its STINGRAY product line of RFICs and MMICs that will include high performance mmWave LNA, PAs, mixers, switches and front-end modules (FEMs) in 2018.
Carbonics was spun-out from UCLA and USC and funded by university-sponsored research from the Center of Excellence for Green Nanotechnologies at UCLA and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Center (KACST), SRC, DARPA, US Air Force and UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute Technology Incubator.
