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Exypnotech takes delivery of Delvotec machine, hires veteran Production Manager Ronald Krippendorf
ExypnoTech Gmbh Hires Production Manager for Smart Inlay Production in Rudolstadt; Final Acceptance of Production System At F&K Delvotech
22 Jul 2002, 08:02am ET
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RUDOLSTADT, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 22, 2002--ExypnoTech GmbH, a subsidiary of NanoPierce Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB:NPCT), announced today the appointment of Dipl.-Ing. Ronald Krippendorf, effective today, as the Production Manager for the high-volume production of smart inlays in the new ExypnoTech production facility located in the IGZ (Innovations- und Grunderzentrum) Rudolstadt, Germany. Further, after completing a two week acceptance procedure, ExypnoTech today took delivery of its first high-speed production line for RFID smart inlays from F&K Delvotech.
Ronald Krippendorf holds an engineering diploma in precision mechanics with an emphasis on electronics and a diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) in specialized electrical engineering from the Carl Zeiss School of Engineering in Jena, Thuringia. Mr. Krippendorf has extensive experience in production engineering, including leading important programs at JENOPTIK, for laser material treatment and the installation and coordination of systems for material handling. As Supply Chain Manager for OMNIKEY AG, a leading German system integrator for smart card systems, Mr. Krippendorf was responsible for the production of smart card reader systems and achieved substantial quality improvements and cost reductions.
Bernhard Maier, Chief Operating Officer of ExypnoTech, stated: ''We feel very fortunate that we were able to hire Ronald Krippendorf for ExypnoTech. With his experience and career background he has excellent qualifications to manage our production facility in Rudolstadt. He is not only the perfect addition to the ExypnoTech team, he will be our basis for the planned future growth of a successful RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) component production facility.''
Ronald Krippendorf said: ''I am very excited about my new position. I see in ExypnoTech an enormous potential for becoming a major player in the RFID world for two key reasons. Firstly, the new WaferPierce(TM) technology will give an immediate technical and economic advantage for production of RFID components. Secondly, the management team convinced me, based on our initial discussions, of their professionalism and their extensive knowledge of the RFID market. I am convinced that we will make ExypnoTech a successful company.''
Extensive tests of the first production line for smart inlays have been carried out over the last few weeks on the premises of F&K Delvotech in Ottobrunn near Munich. These tests have been completed on schedule. The tests focused on inlays of 45 by 45 millimeters and 45 by 76 millimeters, which are regarded as the current industry standards, and with the I-Code chip from Philips Semiconductors. Over the next few weeks, additional RFID chips from Infineon and other suppliers will be tested and delivered to customers for trials. Additionally, production to fulfill initial customers' trial orders will begin.
To achieve this, the production line will initially be set-up at a NanoPierce Card Technologies location for approximately three months to ensure continued close cooperation with development staff. ''Once we have completed the immediate pending orders we will transfer the production line to Rudolstadt,'' explained Dr. Michael E. Wernle, CEO & President of ExypnoTech. ''Over the next few weeks we will be able to validate several additional new approaches for later use, including ultrasonic bonding (see NanoPierce Press Release of April 3rd), parallel to ramping up production. These developments will enhance the performance of the firm's existing technologies rather than replacing them. We are definitely very pleased to be moving now from development to large-scale production. It is a powerful additional motivation for the whole team.''
RFID inlays are used to produce smart labels, smart cards and other RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) products. RFID is currently employed for tracking and identifying luggage, shipping containers, express mail, rail cars, personal access, automated toll collection, article surveillance, library books and vehicle immobilizers, to name just a few applications. It is reported, for instance, that Texas Instruments has shipped more than 50 million RFID tags used in vehicle immobilizers and that Ford Motor Company uses smart tags embedded in the car keys.
Paul H. Metzinger, President and Chief Executive Officer of NanoPierce Technologies, Inc. said: ''RFID devices are seen as the next generation replacement for barcode labels. The market size of barcode applications is extremely large. For example, in 2001, 8 billion printed barcode labels were used in express delivery services and 6 billion used for airline baggage identification. We are targeting these and other high-volume market applications for our RFID inlays. We intend to gain a large market share of these high-volume, frequently replaced applications.''
About ExypnoTech GmbH
ExypnoTech GmbH is a 100% subsidiary of NanoPierce Technologies,
Inc., of Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., which is traded on the NASDAQ stock market (OTCBB:NPCT) as well as in Frankfurt and Hamburg (OTC:NPI). In addition to the 12 patents it owns, NanoPierce has numerous applications pending, others in preparation, and various other intellectual properties related to NanoPierce's proprietary NCS(TM) (NanoPierce Connection System). This advanced system is designed to provide significant improvement over conventional electrical and mechanical interconnection methods for high-density circuit boards, components, sockets, connectors, semiconductor packaging and electronic systems.
For more information about NanoPierce Technologies, Inc., log on
to the Company's website at http://www.nanopierce.com .
This announcement contains forward-looking statements about
NanoPierce Technologies, Inc., and its subsidiaries, that may involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors relating to the Company's operations could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements and are further detailed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) available at the SEC's website (http://www.sec.gov ). All forward-looking statements are based
on information available to NanoPierce Technologies, Inc., on the date hereof, and NanoPierce Technologies, Inc., assumes no obligation to update such statements.
CONTACT: NanoPierce Technologies, Inc., Denver
Paul. H. Metzinger, 303/592-1010
Fax: 303/592-1054
Email: paul@nanopierce.com
or
ExypnoTech GmbH, Rudolstadt, Germany
Bernhard Maier, + 49-8102-8961-40
Fax: + 49-8102-8961-41
or
Stock Enterprises
Investor Relations:
James Stock, 702/614-0003
KEYWORD: COLORADO GERMANY INTERNATIONAL EUROPE
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURING NETWORKING
SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT CHANGES
SOURCE: NanoPierce Technologies, Inc.
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URL: http://www.businesswire.com
Copyright 2002, Business Wire
Muell - Then we are in complete agreement after all.
It will be interesting to see how things shape up over the next few days. I believe that the "fundamentalist" would argue that any dip will represent a very short-lived buying opportunity (and that is my orientation). From a TA point of view, though, I would presume that one might argue that some damage can be done by such a sharp dip in price, regardless of how unjustified it may be in terms of the fundamentals?
I will be eager to see your analysis, and those of dgst, dannyboy, and our other TA experts, after the dust has settled today!
Best regards,
Geoff
Bruce, if you owned one percent of the company before this change, you own one percent of the company after the change. This would still be true if the "Authorized" shares had been increased to a hundred gazillion billion.
If you doubt this, consider the following:
If your ownership of NPCT had really decreased to 0.5 percent, who is now the owner of your other half percent?
Answer: You. Your percentage of ownership is unchanged by this non-event, although certain lowlife bashers would like you to think otherwise.
Best regards,
Geoff
Muell, I respectfully disagree with your statement that yesterday's announcement was "anything but positive." The only people who are frightened about yesterday's announcement are the ones who don't understand the difference between Authorized shares and shares which are actually issued.
I do agree that we could see some genuine selling at the open from people who are unnecessarily freaked out. I also think that MM's might take advantage of the anxiety this has stimulated in some people to try to scare people into selling by their usual "shakeout" tactics.
The smart money will be buying today IMO, causing any dip in price to be quite short lived.
Best regards,
Geoff
Authorized Shares -- The Real Truth Is ....
....that this was a routine housekeeping event which provides us with virtually no information about the company's intentions.
It has no impact upon the value of the shares which we own.
The only difference is that it makes it possible for certain things to be done, which could not previously have been done.
It does not tell us anything about which of those things will actually be done.
Not surprisingly, each person who thought that they knew (before this announcement) what the company was going to do, now finds proof in the announcement that they were right. Yawn.
An analogy: You would have to obtain a passport in order to travel to a foreign country, right? But if you obtain a passport, does it guarantee that you really will go to a particular country, or that you have decided which country to visit?
Somebody let me know if we get some news this week, will you?
Best regards,
Geoff
Trev, I'm with Bbarrett -- No way should you give up the Ministry of Peace!
First, you have performed excellent service in the interest of genuine peace by means of your wonderful recent post on the difference between material wealth and true (spiritual) wealth. {Please see my new signature tag line below. Anyone who wishes to borrow it is welcome -- no royalties required.)
Second, in the immortal tradition started by Samuel Colt and furthered by Ronald Reagan (who named the deadliest nuclear weapon delivery system ever made after Mr. Colt's famous "Peacemaker"), you have directed the Ministry of Peace with deadly accuracy in dealing with certain obnoxious threats to the pubic welfare.
And third, based upon several of your recent comments, if you were no longer the Minister of Peace, you would immediately be drafted into service as Minister of Sarcasm!! LOL!!
Keep up the great work, Trev, I really enjoy your many contributions here and on the other NPCT boards.
Best regards,
Geoff
We will all get filthy stinkin' rich and start foundations.
Thomson Kernaghan clients sue to block merger -- Posted by f_milam at the RB JNOT board
March 18, 2002
OSC asked to block brokers' merger over lawsuits
Thomson Kernaghan deal with Research Capital draws fire
Derek DeCloet and Sinclair Stewart
Financial Post
A group of unhappy Thomson Kernaghan & Co. customers have asked the Ontario Securities Commission to block a proposed merger with Research Capital Corp. unless the brokerage firm puts aside money to settle a string of outstanding lawsuits.
The formal request was lodged last week on behalf of Katharine Brodie, a 65-year old retired widow who is suing Thomson Kernaghan (TK) and its chairman, Mark Valentine, to recover more than $600,000 in losses she claims to have suffered because of "unsuitable" investments."
Neil Gross, a lawyer representing Mrs. Brodie, sent a letter to the securities regulator on Wednesday saying the merger was "prejudicial to the public interest" and that it would leave TK with insufficient cash to settle the various suits.
In January the two firms announced they would combine most of their operations under the Research Capital Corp (RCC) banner to form one of the largest independent brokerages in the country, with an estimated $3-billion in assets and a network of 180 advisors. The TK name, however, will continue to exist through its Nasdaq trading operation, which will continue as a separate entity run by Mr. Valentine.
Because the transaction is not a strict merger, Mr. Gross said he is concerned that this pared-down operation -- which he described as "an eviscerated post-merger . . . remnant" -- may be solely accountable for paying any damages.
"Having regard to the state of Nasdaq trading at the present time, and the uncertain outlook for junior capital markets, it is evident that [TK] will have far less ability to satisfy judgements in the plaintiffs' cases after the core of its operations is removed," he wrote, adding that lawyers for several other plaintiffs plan to send similar letters to the OSC.
"This can be expected to leave an inadequate level of protection for those investors who now find themselves in the position of suing [TK]."
Mr. Gross petitioned the OSC to delay the marriage unless TK sets aside enough cash, either in court or through letters of credit, to cover the several millions of dollars worth of outstanding claims. He also asked the Investment Dealers Association of Canada to withhold its approval on the deal until the OSC issued a decision.
Executives at TK and RCC could not be reached for comment.
Darryl Cruz, a lawyer for a married couple who is also suing the brokerage, sent a letter to the OSC on Thursday echoing these concerns and asking for the regulator to intercede.
Christopher Morgis and his wife, Joanne, are seeking $5.75-million in damages, in addition to legal costs, for alleged breach of contract, negligence, and breach of fiduciary duty.
In their statement of claim against TK and one of its employees, Pat Teggart, the couple alleges that the firm failed to monitor margin limits in their accounts and encouraged "speculative risk taking," including short selling, without first advising them about possible risks. They also contend that Mr. Teggart made unauthorized trades through the Morgis accounts, and that TK cashed some of their cheques without proper approval.
Mrs. Brodie likewise alleges in her statement of claim that neither the firm nor her adviser, Ian Grieve, warned her of the risks associated with investing in a number of stocks and warrants, and made transactions in her accounts without her authorization.
She also maintained that her signature had been forged and $40,000 was improperly transferred from her RRSP account to buy $155,999.25 worth of units in a limited partnership with ties to Mr. Valentine. She claimed that TK ignored her requests to sell the units, which eventually suspended redemptions, and that she has lost the investment.
Mr. Gross said he has not yet received a reply from the OSC. A spokesman for the OSC declined to comment.
ddecloet@nationalpost.com; sstewart@nationalpost.com
Dutch, it's extremely hard to separate fact from myth regarding short selling on the OTCBB. If we were on the NYSE or NASDAQ, where there is a consensus that the rules are actually enforced, then taking physical possession of our certs would mean something for sure. I have read, btw, that brokers are not allowed to lend shares from a SEP/IRA account for someone else to short, and that if your shares are in that type of account you don't make them any more inaccessible to the shorters by taking possession. (In fact, I'm not even sure if you could take possession of such shares without affecting the tax status of your account -- I presume it would be treated as a withdrawal.)
For accounts other than SEP/IRA's, maybe it makes a difference but I don't actually think so. Consider:
On the OTCBB, any MM can engage in "naked shorting" -- meaning that they can sell nonexistent shares without actually borrowing real shares from anyone. The supposed purpose of this is to make it easier for them to stabilize the market without having to be burdened by the cost of maintaining a large inventory. In principle, they are supposed to maintain such a short position only very briefly for the purpose of stabilizing the market, and cover as soon as the market has cooled down. And many MM's may actually play by that rule.
However, the MM is under no obligation to report his short positions to the SEC or any other regulatory body, as they would have to do on the NASDAQ, NYSE, etc. As a result, it is possible for them to short and short and short and short some more, with the goal of driving a weak company out of business so that they will never have to cover. If the company goes belly up, they just keep every penny that they took in for selling nonexistent paper. And, if a MM is in cahoots with a large short-selling client, there is nothing to stop them from letting their client sell short without actually borrowing any shares. It is widely believed that some highly unethical MM's engage in such behavior, though I certainly would not be able to prove it. (I'll leave that to Mr. O'Quinn! LOL!!)
So, if the shorting that is hurting a company's share price is being done by people who do not really need to borrow real shares from anyone in order to sell short, we could take physical possession of the entire float and it wouldn't stop them.
What can stop them? Evidence that a company (like NPCT) is so strong that it will never ever need to sell more shares in order to stay in business and thrive. When that becomes evident, the risk of shorting becomes too great even for the MM's.
So, bring it on, Team NPCT, and let's see the cucarachas run for cover!
Best regards,
Geoff
Rubberworm -- I think it's a great summary. Surprise6 gives the appearance of being pretty close to the action. The main portion of this summary was written a few weeks ago, although I think he may have revised parts of it more recently. In any case, the proxy vote has been completed and the recap plan is going forward.
The interesting thing (to me) was that the share price actually went down a nickel or so when the recap was approved (it was around 45 cents at the time). But since then, it has risen to as high as $1.31, suggesting that a squeeze might really be happening.
Personally, I agree with Surprise6 that JNOT isn't worth more than 40 cents on its own merits, and I am not inclined to buy a company that I think is overvalued just because of an alleged short squeeze -- I'll leave that to the MoMo players.
But I do follow JNOT because of the possible implications for NPCT. If MV is anywhere near as deeply short JNOT as Surprise6 claims, and also shorts NPCT, he might be expected to increase his short position in NPCT whenever he needs more cash to avoid margin calls, putting short term pressure on NPCT. There have been two occasions when I felt that the trading was consistent with this possibility, the latest being Friday March 15th. But in the long run, if he goes completely under, his accounts would be closed against his will, and the MM's and clearinghouses could be forced to cover his short positions. At that point, our share price could get a boost.
Before anybody points this out, I am well aware of the fact that this could all be somebody's fantasy, Mark Valentine might not be short JNOT or NPCT, and the JNOT share price could have run up solely on hype and MM manipulation. I don't think anybody really knows, it's just an interesting game to watch and one which could have implications for NPCT -- I'm not saying that it does, though.
Best regards,
Geoff
Nanoflight, I believe that you are correct that it has not been directly stated that Mr. Pfeiffer left a job at 3M to come to Nanopierce. (And I admit to being one of those who assumed that he had done so.) OTOH, I've read a lot of these kind of announcements and I have never, ever read one that said explicitly, "Mr. X resigned from his job at MegaCorp to come and work with us." It would be considered tacky. The standard way of wording these announcements is to say that "Before joining OurCompany, Mr. X was employed as XXX at YYY."
So, in theory, the possibilities include: 1) that he was fired, 2) that he was given the opportunity to leave with the understanding that if he didn't he would be fired, 3) he retired from 3M before he had even heard of NPCT, or 4) he retired from 3M with the intention of joining NPCT.
I assume that #1 and #2 are so unlikely as not to merit serious consideration. If it was #4, it still means that he saw NPCT as the best opportunity for a new phase of his career. If it was #3, he was apparently happily retired and NPCT tempted him out of retirement. Either #3 or #4 works fine for me.
For that matter, it's also possible that he might have left 3M with the blessing of top management (maybe they even made him eligible for retirement earlier than he normally would have been) because they wanted to have a really, really good friend at Nanopierce.
IMHO all of the plausible explanations are extremely favorable, so it doesn't seem to be a big deal one way or another.
Best regards,
Geoff
PS Maybe when you fly the corporate jet to St. Paul to pick him up and bring him to Denver, you can pick up a little more info. If MadDog can get "scraps" of info under Paul's table, our Minister of Flies and Flying Machines can probably do even better!
Willy was shown the Door. Minister Morrison wanted him to get the Chair, or at least the Rope, but no such luck.
It's a whole new world at IHUB NPCT! Viva La Revolucion! HAIL VICTORY!!
Best regards,
Geoff
Bullrider, you seem to be missing the point of the IHUB NPCT board.
We all KNOW where the price of NPCT will be next year. Thus there is little need to talk about such mundane things, except when somebody discovers something really new and interesting, at which point we steal it from whatever board it was actually first posted on. We only steal the best.
If you want to stay on topic, there are other places to do that. This is the board with a sense of humor!
"Abuse is down the hall."
Best regards,
Geoff
Could be, PsymanSr, and always remember ---
Just cuz you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get ya!
Hey, did you watch Northern Exposure? If so, you'll remember the character that your post reminded me of -- the guy who seemed paranoid but maybe really WAS an ex-spook being watched by the gov't?
Best regards,
Geoff
Doc -- I was certainly skeptical about whether the JNOT recap plan would work. Many companies have tried similar things in the past without success. It is still possible that JNOT's rise from below 50 cents just prior to approval of the plan to $1.30 today, on gigantic volume (millions of shares a day), is nothing but a huge Pump and Dump scheme with MM's artificially boosting the volume and jacking up the price. But it also looks more and more plausible that it really is working and Markie Mark is getting worked over bigtime. In fact, I think you could argue that the way NPCT has tanked right at times when he would have been most desperate if the JNOT story were true could be taken as supporting evidence for the "JNOT recap is working" hypothesis.
IMHO JNOT's fundamental story doesn't justify this kind of activity, so it's got to be something else -- either P&D or a short squeeze. And if MV really is on the ropes (as some claim) and short tens of millions of shares, he could be financial dead meat within days. If that happens, and his accounts are closed out against his will, we could see some heavy buying in NPCT as his shorts are covered.
I don't see it as being worth Paul's while, at this stage in the game, to try to implement a similar scheme -- All he needs to do is let the good news (when it can be released) speak for itself. But if we happened to get great news at just the right time, MV being bought in could be like a shot of nitrous to the NPCT dragster!!
The main point of all this, IMHO, is that NPCT longs should be aware of the games that are (may be) being played and not be disheartened by action like we had on Friday.
Best regards,
Geoff
Great line by Stvaldaymazzcur on RB JNOT board (talking about JNOT, not NPCT, but it's his comment to our favorite Bikerslut Lady of Mercy that cracked me up!):
"So what do we have now? A company that ain't what it used to be, but who is these days....Nortel, Air Canada? But if this squeeze is real, then this outhouse is fortunate enough to be built on a diamond mine. If not, than I guess I can retire on my Enron nest egg. I'm kidding mmmmary, you don't need to come rushing in and give me the Andrea Yates "I'm saving you" spa treatment.
ROFLMAO!! God help us all from being saved!
Best regards,
Geoff
PS I love IHUB NPCT --- We steal from the best!! LOL!
Maybe we got Valentined today???
Several weeks ago, I proposed the following:
If someone held a massive short position in JNOT (as a hard core of people at the RB JNOT board would have us believe) and the same person held a (probably much smaller) short position in NPCT, and if that person came under massive pressure from a ''short squeeze'' in JNOT, then that person might engage in additional short sales of NPCT in order to bring in urgently needed cash (to try to avoid margin calls as his accounts got deeper into the red) as well as to make his NPCT short position look less problematic. (It would only look better because he would succeed in driving the price a little lower -- but in reality it would be worse because he would have increased the size of his short position.)
If this person truly is on the ropes financially and is short tens of millions of shares on JNOT (as some claim), then he would have been sweating bullets today, as JNOT gained about 20 cents on over three million shares traded.
It's enormously speculative, because I don't think anyone really has solid proof of what this hypothetical individual might be up to. But, IMHO, there's a more than decent chance that the only reason NPCT went down today was as I've described above. In which case, today's trading action in NPCT meant absolutely nothing about the progress of the company.
If you think what I've said might be plausible, you might want to take a glance at an intraday chart for MBPT, another company that our fiend is believed to have shorted.
If the theories of the JNOT gang are correct, our short selling friend may be bleeding like a stuck pig in shark infested waters. Monday could be very interesting. Volatility could be extremely high for NPCT and MBPT and any others that this bozo shorts. The more desperate he gets, the more he might short us -- but if the momentum players keep pouring into JNOT and the ''JNOT short squeeze theory'' gains even more believers, Mr. V could find his accounts closed out against his will and his short positions bought in by the brokers, MM's, and clearinghouses. If NPCT does get driven down by additional short selling, it could also turn on a dime and take off like a rocket.
Best regards and all Just My Humble Speculation,
Geoff
BigBass, T/A refers to the eye candy on Bbarrett's beach.
Best regards,
Geoff
That's right, RW. When you gotta go, you gotta go. eom
Best regards,
Geoff
Finn -- ROFL -- Thanks for link! eom
La Trine??? That's French, right? As in, "We'll have two bottles of the '57 Chateau La Trine, please."
Yeah, I think I can handle this job!
Best regards,
Geoff
Rubberworm -- Great job!! You really wormed some good information out of Dr. N.!
It's not just that Paul drives a truck -- It's the way Herb referred to it as "a great big honkin' Dodge pickup" that makes me love these guys!
Well, that plus the fact that they are gonna make me f.s.r.
Best regards,
Geoff
RW, FWIW, if you mean a bidding war for a takeover of NPCT, my thoughts are:
It won't happen. Offers will be made early in the game (and might already have been made) but Paul will wisely turn them down. He will sell a percentage of the company or one of its subsidiaries to finance expansion, but never the whole shebang.
In communications with shareholders and at promotional meetings, Paul will make references to the possibility of a buyout, but he will be doing so only because he knows that shareholders and potential shareholders like to hear it. It makes them think "instant riches."
For a big player, the point of acquiring Nanopierce early in the game would be to obtain permanent exclusive rights to the technology. Half a billion would be a cheap price to pay for that, if it enabled you to deprive your competitors of access to the technology and hog it all for yourself. But Paul knows the company will soon be worth way more than a half billion, so he won't sell for the kind of prices that they will offer that early in the game.
In the meantime, NPCT will sign contracts and issue licenses to one major player after another. Share price will skyrocket. A company which acquired NPCT would also acquire the company's contractual obligations -- I don't think that they could legally void those licenses/contracts just to screw the competition. So, the incentive to try to gain ownership of the technology would be limited, while the market cap would have risen to five or ten billion. Thus the incentive to take the company over would be gone.
IMHO if this company is ever acquired by another company, we will all have gotten FSR long before it happens.
Just my totally speculative ideas, but you asked for them! LOL!!
Best regards,
Geoff
HAIL VICTORY!!! EOM
NPCT and the MIT Auto-ID Center
Collectively, I think we have vacillated between over- and under-estimating the importance of the MIT Auto-ID Center. IMO, it ain't Camelot, but it also ain't insignificant.
I think I have recently begun to understand both why it is potentially so important, and at the same time why the future of Nanopierce does not depend upon it.
There are two FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT approaches to the world of smart tags, and there is plenty of room for both of them. I don't think anyone has really given names to these two different models of how to proceed with the development of the smart tag industry, so for lack of better terms, I'll call them the 'Real World Model' and the 'Ideal Model.' I do not intend to imply that either of these approaches is inherently superior to the other. They are merely different.
The 'Real World Model' could just as well be called the 'Tag It If It's Worth It' model. The idea here is that we begin by accepting the current state of the art in smart tag/label manufacturing, along with progressive refinements of that art. If smart labels cost 50 cents, we will stick them on things that justify a fifty-cent label. You wouldn't hesitate to put that kind of label on a $500 dress, if you thought it would reduce theft. If smart labels cost 20 cents, they would probably save FedEx and UPS a lot of money. At a dime, maybe you'd put them on a $5 package of razor blades. The cheaper the label, the bigger the market.
Obviously, there are a lot of items that are not valuable enough to justify the cost of a five-cent label. But even at 20 cents or so, there is a market for billions of smart labels per year. Philips, TI, Infineon and others are counting on tremendous growth in the demand for their RFID chips as the cost of smart labels is steadily driven downward. I believe that Nanopierce's NCS will play a significant role in this process by helping to cut costs and improve quality.
While twenty-cent and ten-cent and even five-cent labels have many extremely important uses (tracking and inventory, package delivery, airline baggage, prevention of theft, etc.), this 'Real World' approach has a very important limitation in comparison with Bar Code labels: As long as there are a lot of items that are too cheap to justify the cost of a smart tag, these labels will not be adopted for use at retail cash registers. That's why there is room for a second approach to the question of smart labels.
The 'Ideal Model' might better be called the 'Tag EVERYTHING Model,' and it is this approach that is firmly entrenched in the MIT Auto-ID Project. Why? Several reasons, I think: First, there is a demand for it. Supermarkets, drug stores, retail stores of every variety would benefit from being able to ring up merchandise quickly and easily using RFID labels. Second, MIT people like to think big. They are big-time 'systems thinkers,' and the bigger the system, the better they like to think about it. So they envision a world in which EVERY object manufactured has an RFID tag attached, which not only would allow for universal use in checkout lanes, but which also goes way beyond that, to things like the appliances of the future where your refrigerator 'tells' you that those eggs are past their expiration date and your microwave 'reads' information from your frozen food and cooks it accordingly. Third, take a look at the end-user sponsors of the Auto-ID Project. Gillette, Proctor and Gamble, etc. etc. They get a lot of sponsorship money from big-time consumer products makers who would like very much to be able to put smart labels on everything they make and ship and sell.
When you begin with the goal of putting smart labels on EVERYTHING, then the cost of the labels is all-important. In order to do this, you have GOT to be able to get the cost down to a penny (or two at most) per label. That's gonna be pretty tricky, given that the real estate on a Silicon wafer costs about four cents a square millimeter. So this in itself dictates that your chips can't be bigger than a quarter of a square millimeter. Chips that small are quite difficult to handle using standard 'pick and place' methods, which explains the Auto-ID Center's love affair with Alien Technologies. (Alien has a process called 'Fluidic Self-Assembly' which enables them to place monstrous numbers of extremely small chips on a substrate very cheaply.)
In addition to the cost of the silicon itself, the complexity of the circuitry on the chip is an important cost factor. The more logic and memory you put on the chip, the more it costs. So, the Auto-ID Center philosophy is to strip the chip itself down to the absolute barest minimum. All they want to have on the chip is 96 bits of memory which can be read as many times as you want, but written to only once. Their version of an RFID chip, to put it bluntly, is not very smart. All the chip has is a big, long, unique identifying number. The real intelligence is in the network of computers off the chip. When the chip is read, the reader has to be able to access a database in order to find out that item number such-and-such is a 16-ounce container of BBQ flavored Pringle's priced at however much the store is charging. Presumably, your local Kroger's would receive data from all their suppliers telling them what merchandise corresponds to what range of item numbers, and they would maintain their own prices.
Actually, the 'Real World' players have been going in the completely opposite direction: They have been making their chips smarter and smarter. Gigantic amounts of memory which can be rewritten as many times as you please, with encryption capability and partitioned into segments so that only the manufacturer can write to this segment, the shipper to this segment, the retailer to this segment. Bigger, smarter tags have applications that the el cheapo versions envisioned by MIT can't even dream of.
Thus we have two FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT ways of approaching the implementation of smart label technology, each driven by somewhat different goals and philosophies. IMO, it is very clear that NCS has an important role to play in advancing the 'Real World Model.' I think it is a lot less clear as to whether NCS will play any role in the 'Ideal Model,' since this depends on things that are not known at this time. In particular, we do not know whether Alien Technologies has developed a method of attaching antennas to their fluid-assembled chips without needing NCS, or, OTOH, whether Nanopierce might offer them the best method of solving this problem.
In any case, I don't see how we could possibly view the MIT Auto-ID Center as insignificant, given the enormous size of the consumer products companies that are involved as sponsors. (How big are they? Here's one way to look at it: If all the sponsors of the Auto-ID Center were to use smart tags on all their products, they would consume roughly one tenth of the world's supply of silicon wafers, possibly a bit more -- and that's using very optimistic assumptions about how many chips can be made from each wafer.) The opportunity to rub elbows with companies like International Paper, Gillette, and Proctor & Gamble, with Noel Eberhardt making the introductions, is priceless.
OTOH, there may be a very legitimate possibility that the visions of the MIT Auto-ID Center may be little more than pie in the sky for years to come. They have a pilot project in place right now to evaluate the use of smart tags in the retail supply chain. Very big players (manufacturers and retailers) are participating, and I imagine they are probably actually putting smart labels on every little package of gum and running them through RFID readers at the checkout counters. But I flat-out guarantee you that those labels were not made for a penny apiece. And until they can be, I do not think that RFID labels will attain universal use in the retail supply chain.
In the meantime, the 'Real World Approach' will continue to make steady progress. Billions of labels will be sold for 15 cents, and billions more for a dime. People will get filthy stinkin rich, and IMO NPCT shareholders will be among them. So, maybe we'll become an integral part of MIT's vision of the future, or maybe not, but I think NPCT can make a lot of money with or without being adopted by the MIT-Alien crowd.
Best regards,
Geoff
Nanopierce's Technology: Orientation for New Investors
(I guess some of y'all may have seen this before.)
If you're new to Nanopierce, and especially if you're unfamiliar with the world of microelectronics and struggling to get a handle on what this "NCS Technology" is all about, this post is for you!
The "Nanopierce Connection System" (NCS) is a revolutionary new method of making electrical connections. The simplest and most familiar way of making a connection is just to place two conductors (wires, for example) in contact with each other. That's what we do when we plug an appliance into an electrical outlet, or when we hook up a set of jumper cables to jump-start a car with a dead battery. Electricians connect the wires in our houses by screwing "wire nuts" onto the bare tips of the wires to hold them together. Most people are also familiar with solder, a metal alloy which is melted and then allowed to cool and turn back into a solid. It's used when we want a very good connection (one which allows electricity to flow through the connection with little resistance) and we don't need (or want) the connection to be easily disconnected.
NCS technology involves a special method of preparing the surface of an electrical conductor so that it will make an extremely good (low-resistance) contact with another conductor when the two conductors are pressed together. No solder is required. One of the surfaces to be connected is coated with a very thin layer of metal (nickel) containing tiny particles of diamond "dust." The pointy metal-coated diamond particles stick up above the surrounding surface. When the treated surface is pressed tightly against the surface of another (untreated) electrical conductor, the sharp pointed diamond particles pierce the surface of the other conductor, establishing a very good electrical connection. No heating is required because no solder is used.
While there might be some uses for NCS in connecting relatively large conductors like the wiring in your house or car, it is in making the extremely tiny connections which are required in manufacturing semiconductor devices ("chips" for electronic devices) that NCS yields enormous advantages over existing technologies.
The potential market for NCS is the entire electronics industry: computer processors and memory chips, the tiny chips used in "smart card" and "smart label" applications, light-emitting diodes ("LED's"), cell phones, etc. I will discuss several of these market segments individually.
Complex circuits, including memory chips (DRAM's etc.), CPU's and other computer components, cell phone chips, etc.
Background: Most people do not realize that these chips are not manufactured individually. They are made from large "wafers" of silicon. On each wafer, there may be dozens, hundreds, even thousands of individual chips, depending on the size of the wafer and the size of each chip. (Technically, each individual chip is called a "die"; the plural is "dice.") In 2002, chip makers are beginning to use the largest wafers ever: 300 mm. (approx. 12 inches) in diameter. When the internal circuitry for all the chips on the wafer is finished, the individual chips are separated, but they are not yet ready for use. In order to do anything useful, the chip has to be able to communicate with the "outside world." Connections have to be made between the circuitry on the chip and the device (computer, cell phone, etc.) that it's used in.
If you've seen a CPU or memory chip, you will recall that they usually look kind of like centipedes, with a row of tiny metal legs on each side. These "legs" are usually plugged into a socket on a circuit board (often abbreviated "PCB' for Printed Circuit Board). The chip receives its power through some of these legs, but most of the "legs" are used to send instructions and data to the chip and to receive output from the chip. Relatively simple chips may have about a dozen "legs," while more complex chips have hundreds of them. Each of those little "centipede legs" has to be individually and precisely connected to the proper point on the chip itself, so that it makes contact with the proper portion of the complex circuitry within the chip.
For quite a few years, the standard method of making these connections was a technique known as "wire bonding." This technique works well enough, but it has its disadvantages, perhaps the biggest one being that the connections must be made one at a time. More recently, "flip chip" manufacturing has mounted a serious challenge to wire bonding because all the connections are made at once.
"Flip chip" is kind of like making a sandwich. Imagine that you have a chip, freshly "diced" from its wafer, lying on the table with the side that has all the I/O connection pads facing up. Next to that, imagine a thin slice of a nonconductive material which is the same size and shape as the chip, with all those little "centipede legs" already built into it. (The "centipede legs" are pointing down, the same way that they will eventually be when the finished chip is installed into a socket.) The thin slice with the "centipede legs" is called the "substrate." Each "centipede leg" extends onto the surface of the substrate. Now we take the chip and flip it over (which is where "flip chip" comes from) and stick it down on top of the substrate. The I/O (Input/Output) pads on the chip and the extensions from the "centipede legs" are carefully located so that they will match up when the two slices of our "sandwich" are pressed together. However, in this case, you can't make a good enough connection just by having a conductor on one side press up against the conductor on the other side. The existing "state of the art" for making good connections has been to use solder. An incredibly tiny "ball" of solder is placed at each connection point. (There are numerous techniques for doing this.) After the two layers are put together, the whole assembly is heated just enough to melt ("reflow") the solder. When it cools and solidifies, you have a very good electrical and physical connection.
Flip chip production methods using solder can be much more efficient than wire bonding. Other benefits of flip chip include cooling of the chip (heat flows easily from the chip through the solder to the substrate) and holding the two layers solidly together. Compared with wire bonding, flip chip methods can also provide better connections and shorter electrical pathways, yielding greater efficiency and speed of operation of the chip. Also, wire bonding can only be done along the edges of the chip. Flip chip solder bumps can be spread over the entire mating surfaces of the chip and substrate, allowing far more I/O channels on a chip of a given size.
However, flip chip techniques using solder are not perfect by a long shot. There are an awful lot of steps in the production process. On the chip itself, the metal used for the surface of the bond pads is usually aluminum, and solder doesn't stick to aluminum very well at all. Also, when aluminum is exposed to air, it very quickly forms a surface layer of oxide which impedes the flow of electricity. In one approach to this problem, a process called "sputter etching" is used to remove the oxide and expose a fresh aluminum surface. Then several layers of different metals are laid down onto the aluminum. These layers of metal are called the "Under Bump Metallization" or "UBM." First, the aluminum is coated with an adhesion layer, which prevents further oxidation of the aluminum and also gives the next layer something it can stick to. The next layer may be a "diffusion barrier" to keep atoms of the solder bump metals from finding their way into the body of the chip and ruining it. Then there is another layer which provides for solder "wettability." Then the solder ball itself is formed on top of the UBM, using any of about a dozen available techniques. Heat is then applied to melt the solder. The chip and substrate are now solidly connected at dozens or even hundreds of separate points, but the thickness of the solder balls prevents the two layers from actually touching each other between the intended connection points. This is good, because if they did touch, the whole thing would short out, but you can't just leave the chip with a tiny gap between the layers because sooner or later moisture might get in there and short it out anyway! So the last step is to fill the gap with a nonconductive "underfill" which is dispensed along the edges of the chip and drawn into the gap by capillary action. The underfill also helps to glue the "sandwich" together. It helps to keep the solder bump connections from breaking, particularly when the chip and substrate expand at different rates when they are heated. (This is more of a problem with large chips than small ones.)
As you can see, solder bump methods require a lot of production steps, which can take a long time. Also, there is a limit to how closely solder bumps can be placed to one another, without danger that they will overflow their boundaries when they are reflowed and make unintended contacts with their neighbors, destroying the chip. Also, traditional solders contain Lead (Pb). Governments in many nations are in the process of requiring that Lead be eliminated from electronic products because of pollution issues which arise when the product is discarded. Lead-free solders exist, but they may not work as well and they almost always have to be heated to higher temperatures than solders that contain lead.
Instead of using solder balls, it is possible to use a conductive adhesive to make the connections. However, this requires extremely precise dispensing of the adhesive and has other limitations of its own which have kept this technology from mounting much of a challenge to solder ball methods.
This is where the "WaferPierce" version of Nanopierce's NCS technology comes in. While the chips are still on the wafers, an electroless plating process is used to coat the aluminum contact pads with a thin layer of nickel containing particles of diamond dust. A final very thin layer of gold may be put on top for even better initial electrical performance and resistance to corrosion over the years. After the dice (chips) are cut from the wafer, each die is glued to its substrate under slight pressure, using a non-conductive adhesive which takes the place of the underfill in the solder bump method. Little precision is required in the application of the nonconductive adhesive. It is unnecessary to avoid getting adhesive on the contact points, because when the two layers are pressed together, the sharp points of the metal-coated diamond particles will pierce through the adhesive, as well as through any oxide which may exist on the surface of the mating contact point, establishing an excellent electrical connection. In fact, the nonconductive adhesive shrinks as it cures, pulling the two layers tightly together. NCS connections also provide good heat transfer from the chip to the substrate to help keep the chip cool. Their ability to conduct electricity is at least as good as solder and better than conductive adhesive. The contact points can also be considerably closer together than solder balls without risk of shorting out. Because the plating process is applied to the entire wafer at once, tens of thousands of contact points are treated at the same time.
Using either solder ball flip-chip or NCS technologies, the substrate does not have to be the typical "centipede" which is stuck into a socket which is in turn attached (soldered) to a printed circuit board. If you don't care about being able to remove the chip easily from its board, the chip can also be attached directly to the circuit board itself. In this case, the PCB itself becomes the substrate. "Chip on board" is not a Nanopierce innovation, but NCS is readily adapted to it.
Smart Cards and Smart Labels
"Smart cards" and "smart labels" represent one of Nanopierce's most important target markets for quick commercialization. A smart label is just like any other label: a small sheet of paper or plastic with printing on one side and adhesive on the other. The printed side can display a bar code, a shipping address, whatever you want. The difference is that embedded within the smart label is a tiny electronic chip or "transponder." This chip can store information. The information is sent to and retrieved from the chip by radio waves. The device which "reads" the information on the chip is usually just called a "reader." (I guess they ran out of confusing technical names....) Because "Radio Frequency" waves are used to read the tag, and because the smart label is used to "IDentify" whatever it's attached to, this is often referred to as "RFID" technology. A "smart card" is just like a smart label, except that the chip is embedded in thicker, stiffer plastic --- just like the credit cards you're familiar with, except that the magnetic stripe on the back is replaced by a chip which can store far more information. Smart cards are used for "access control" (opening doors), paying tolls on highways, and (in Europe) making phone calls at public phones. Banks are beginning to combine them with credit cards, and the Mobil Speedpass is basically a smart card in a different physical form.
In the supermarket, the main benefit of smart labels will be easier scanning of items. With bar codes, a cashier has to handle each item and scan it -- sometimes repeatedly, if the scanner fails to read the bar code correctly on the first try. Speeding up the checkout process will benefit customers and stores alike. However, properly managing inventory may be even more important. With a smart label on every item, a retail store can know precisely what's in stock and where it is at all times, which in turn makes it possible to order products efficiently when they are needed. We are very close to seeing smart labels on every piece of luggage carried by every airline, and every package shipped by the major carriers like FedEx and UPS. These applications alone would consume billions of smart labels every year, and Nanopierce is aiming for a share of that market.
The chips in smart labels and smart cards are getting smaller all the time. Chips measuring a little over a millimeter on each side are now common. RFID technology can be either "active" or "passive." The active type is powered by a built-in battery, which gives it a much longer range (maybe as much as 300 feet) at a much higher cost. The passive type has no on-board power supply. It obtains its power from the radio waves transmitted by the reader. Passive tags have a very limited range --- about a meter at best, often less. Even a passive tag, though, has a big advantage over a bar code label: You don't have to be able to see it to read it.
So what does NCS have to do with smart labels and smart cards? Well, like any other radio device, the little tiny chip has to have an antenna to send and receive information. The antenna doesn't have to be a wire or a metal rod -- it can even be a thin stripe of electrically conductive ink printed on the label. But the chip has to be connected to its antenna, and the connection has to hold up even when the flexible label is bent repeatedly. You obviously can't use solder, since the heat would melt the label or set it on fire! NCS can be applied to the contact point on the chip, the chip can be glued to the label using a nonconductive glue, the metal-coated diamond particles pierce through the glue, and you've got a durable low-resistance connection. The cost of producing smart labels can be very substantially reduced using NCS, and cost has been the main obstacle to widespread use of smart labels.
Looking a little farther into the future, the smart tag experts at MIT's Auto-ID Center envision an "Internet of Things" in which virtually every consumer product would carry a smart label and every appliance would be able to read them. Your refrigerator would be able to warn you that the gallon of milk you bought last week has passed its expiration date. Your microwave would read the cooking instructions from a package of frozen food and program itself to cook it. Obviously, you're not going to put a 20-cent label on a 35-cent pack of gum, but if smart labels could be made for a penny apiece, the uses are endless. Even at a nickel apiece, the market would probably reach a hundred billion labels per year within the next few years.
LED's: Light Emitting Diodes
LED's are semiconductor devices that give off light. You see them every day -- the little red indicator light that tells you a phone line is in use, the row of flashing green lights that indicate how loud the music is on your stereo, etc. They are useful because they don't consume much power, they last for years without burning out, and they respond very quickly when switched on and off. Most people are not aware of the extent to which LED's have begun to be used in much larger scale applications over the past few years. The huge displays that are used to show instant replays in football stadiums, for example, are increasingly made with LED's. Approximately ten percent of all the traffic lights in the U.S. now use LED's rather than conventional light bulbs because of their low power consumption and long life. (It has been estimated that replacing all the traffic lights in Tokyo with LED versions will save enough electricity to equal the entire output of a good sized generating plant!) Lighting manufacturers around the world are in an intensive race to develop LED replacements for ordinary incandescent light bulbs. Automakers are moving quickly to adopt LED's for use in brake lights and many other applications.
In order to obtain sufficient brightness and resolution in displays using LED's, it is necessary to mount a lot of LED's very close together. Previously, solder or conductive adhesives have been relied upon to connect the LED's, but these have severe limitations. It's difficult to control the placement of the adhesive precisely enough to keep it from spreading too far and causing short circuits, and similar problems arise with solder. Also, LED's generate a lot of heat, which has to be given an opportunity to dissipate. Nanopierce scientists have shown that NCS works extremely well in this environment as well. (Check out "Electrical and Thermal Performance of a New Process for High Density LED Array Assembly," a paper presented at IMAPS 2001 by Wernle and Kober, available on the company's website.) Nanopierce recently announced the signing of a Letter of Intent with Opto Tech, a leading producer of LED's and LED products, to jointly develop NCS for use in LED applications. Discussions are reported to be under way with other LED manufacturers as well. Although LED's may not turn out to be Nanopierce's biggest profit center, it may be one of the earliest.
This concludes my introduction to Nanopierce's fascinating new technology. I hope you've found it to be useful. A few points to emphasize in conclusion: These are the views and opinions of an ordinary shareholder. I have no professional training in electronics, so it's not impossible that I might have gotten something wrong. I do not represent the company nor was I compensated in any way by NPCT for writing this post (or anything else! LOL!). I also have no formal training or credentials in business or finance, and I am not an investment advisor. In other words, don't take my word for anything. If you're interested enough to want to keep digging, Kent Kloock posts a "Due Diligence" summary just about every day, and it is chock full of valuable links. I also strongly recommend Kathy Knight-McConnell's website, which is found at http://www.investortoinvestor.com .
Best regards,
Geoff Krone
Which way to the bar?
Amazing who they'll let in here, eh?
Best regards,
Geoff