Nantero picking up nanotube development with ON Semi
Dylan McGrath
EE Times
(05/23/2006 8:18 PM EDT)
SAN FRANCISCO — Pioneering startup Nantero Inc. is picking up the carbon nanotube CMOS fabrication development work it started with LSI Logic Corp. with a new partner — On Semiconductor, the new owner of the Gresham, Ore. facility where the work has been done.
ON Semiconductor bought the Gresham fab from LSI Logic for $105 million last month. The facility is 130-nanometer production capable, making it ideal for the development work, the companies said. ON Semiconductor said it retained substantially all of the facility's employees, including most of the in-house engineering team. Nantero had been working with LSI Logic as a manufacturing partner prior to the company's decision to sell the fab.
"We see tremendous potential in this joint project," said Greg Schmergel, Nantero's co-founder and CEO. "Nantero has successfully worked with the engineering team in Gresham for years and we look forward to working with ON Semiconductor to make the world's first production semiconductor devices using carbon nanotubes."
Nantero's proprietary processes for the use of carbon nanotubes are CMOS-compatible and are presently under development at ON Semiconductor's Gresham semiconductor manufacturing campus. The facility was the first production fab in the world to qualify carbon nanotubes, according to the companies.
Within the past month, Nantero (Woburn, Mass.), announced it has fabricated and successfully tested a 22-nanometer memory switch and reportedly said it expects its carbon nanotube nonvolatile memory to come to market in 2007.
"The technological accomplishments already achieved by Nantero in the Gresham facility are impressive," said Bill George, senior vice president of operations for ON Semiconductor, in a statement, "and we expect to work together to realize additional milestones in the integration of carbon nanotubes in CMOS processes."
