Dr. John Smith, a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, founded Alien Technology, formerly Beckmen Display, in December 1994. He served as President and Chief Technologist from Jan. ’95 until Jan. ’97 and continues to serve as a director and consultant to the company.
Alien has developed, and holds patent rights to, a manufacturing technology that will dramatically reduce the manufacturing cost of electronic displays. The technology, Fluidic Self-Assembly (FSA), decouples the fabrication of transistors from the processing of display materials and permits the efficient assembly of drive electronics into all types of Flat Panel Displays. Alien’s mission is “to combine FSA with web processing to become a world leader in display manufacturing.”
In August ’99, Alien closed a $10.5 million 2nd round of financing from new investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Brinson Partners and first-round investors Sevin-Rosen Funds, CMEA Ventures and Dow Chemical. The company has raised $15.4 million to date. Approx. $50M in additional capital will be sought to build Alien’s production facility. Alien has approx. 30+ employees.
FSA makes the fabrication of pixel transistors on large sheets of glass (for AMLCDs) unnecessary. The glass itself becomes unnecessary, and may be replaced by thin, light, flexible, low-cost, easy-to-handle plastic film, which makes it possible to convert the manufacturing process from batch production to continuous-flow reel-to-reel processing.
In the FSA process, specifically shaped semiconductors ranging in size from 10 microns to several hundred microns are suspended in liquid and flowed over a surface which has correspondingly shaped “holes” on it. The shape of the devices and holes is designed so that the devices fall easily into place and self-align. Unused Nanoblocks are cleaned and recycled. Alien has already demonstrated the assembly of tens of thousands of devices in a single process step and is engaging with leaders in web processing to apply proven web equipment and processes to display manufacture.
The FSA process uses silicon Nanoblocks fabricated in standard CMOS wafer foundries. A 6-inch CMOS wafer can yield millions of tiny (tens of microns square) Nanoblocks. Alien “slices” a wafer into millions of Nanoblocks by using a MEMS-based back-side etching process. The company has already demonstrated this process and believes it is production worthy. Depending on the complexity of the displays being manufactured, a 6-inch wafer can produce dozens to thousands of yielded direct-view displays. Nanoblocks can provide value added features like flexible voltage, drive current, frame rates, and display interfaces, touch screen input capability, and embedded intelligence at little or no additional cost.
FSA decouples the fabrication of active devices from the large-area substrate fabrication. The active devices or Nanoblocks can be tested at the wafer level, resulting in a high reliability display and high manufacturing yields. Nanoblocks can also incorporate redundant active devices and redundant row and column drive circuitry, providing backup should one of the devices later become inoperable.
FSA substrates can be made from any number of materials, including glass, plastic, silicon, etc. Reel to reel web processing on flexible substrates allows Alien to fabricate active matrix displays of varying shapes and contours. The FSA process works automatically to place millions of Nanoblocks in minutes or thousands of Nanoblocks in seconds. Substrate fills into a 3-inch square substrate with 11,000 NanoBlock IC sites show consistent 100% fill in 30 - 60 seconds.
Nanoblocks can also be fabricated in other materials, such as SiGe, GaAs or indium gallium phosphide depending on the desired functionality. Differing sizes, shapes, materials and functionality can be readily mixed and matched on a substrate using the FSA process. The FSA process can be used to combine small LEDs or VCSELs into larger silicon drive and control circuit Nanoblocks, which can then be assembled onto a large area substrate.
Alien’s FSA technology certainly sounds too good to be true. We don’t need to go into the advantages of continuous-flow reel-to-reel manufacturing vs. batch processing or the advantages of plastic film vs. glass. Besides the obvious cost advantages, Alien claims that the FSA technology will produce displays with better optical performance than conventional LCD displays.
Alien will initially target the small form-factor display market, focusing on the smallest, simplest displays. The company already has a customer for the smartcard market and will produce flexible smartcards with integrated displays to show account balances. Alien will begin sampling the smartcard product in late 2000 and anticipates shipping millions of smart card displays in 2001. Other potential markets include pagers, cellular phones, and other portable/handheld devices.
Alien has begun work with a major AMLCD manufacturer and is in discussion with others who are interested in using FSA in their existing glass panel fabs. The company has also identified other, non-display applications where FSA has value.
For the nanoblock wafers, Alien uses a variety of foundry suppliers that can offer high voltage (15-20V) processes required to drive a LCD display. The company broke ground on a pilot plant in January with operations expected by mid-year. A volume production facility will be built in Morgan Hill, CA in early 2001 with production by the end of 2001.
Jeffrey Jacobsen, President, CEO and director (formerly VP of Business Development for Kopin’s display division. He holds 18 patents in flat panel display and advanced IC packaging technologies.)
Glenn Gengel, VP of Manufacturing (formerly Director of Product and Process Development at Sheldahl Micro Products, a manufacturer of electronic IC packaging substrates)
Thomas Credelle, VP of Operations (formerly Director of Product Marketing for Motorola’s Flat Panel Display Division)
Roger Stewart, VP of Engineering (formerly Director of the Solid State Display Laboratory at Sarnoff. He has 62 issued US patents and numerous technical publications.)
John M. Hemingway, CFO and VP of finance
Stan Drobac, VP of Business Development
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