Pushing the limits for cost-efficient technology advancements

Smoltek is a pub­lic deep tech start­up in Gothen­burg, Swe­den pio­neer­ing car­bon nanotechnology.

This is Smoltek

Smoltek is devel­op­ing process tech­nol­o­gy and con­cepts for appli­ca­tions based on con­duc­tive car­bon nan­otech­nol­o­gy and, togeth­er with our pro­duc­tion part­ners, we are push­ing the lim­its of what is pos­si­ble in the advanced semi­con­duc­tor, elec­tro­chem­i­cal and green hydro­gen industries. 

Our pri­ma­ry focus is grow­ing and con­fig­ur­ing car­bon nanofibers (CNF), which have extreme­ly excit­ing prop­er­ties, to solve mate­r­i­al engi­neer­ing chal­lenges. We have devel­oped a patent-pro­tect­ed tech­nol­o­gy plat­form that could rev­o­lu­tion­ize tech­ni­cal solu­tions where today’s mate­ri­als have reached their per­for­mance limits.

For exam­ple, we are devel­op­ing ultra-thin high-per­for­mance capac­i­tors (CNF-MIM) for advanced semi­con­duc­tor chips that offer excel­lent pow­er man­age­ment and ener­gy effi­cien­cy for AI, HPC and edge-com­put­ing in an extreme­ly min­i­mized form fac­tor, at com­pet­i­tive cost.

We are also devel­op­ing a rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing new porous trans­port elec­trode (PTE) that can reduce the use of extreme­ly expen­sive irid­i­um cat­a­lysts in PEM (Pro­ton-exchange mem­brane) water-elec­trolyz­ers by 80–95 per­cent! In addi­tion; the PTE also increas­es cat­a­lyst activ­i­ty, reduces con­tact resis­tance – and it can triple the area effi­cien­cy in the elec­tro­chem­i­cal cell.

Carbon nanotechnology

Smoltek’s patent-pro­tect­ed tech­nol­o­gy plat­form enables con­trolled growth of pre­cise­ly local­ized and defined con­duc­tive nanos­truc­tures, as indi­vid­ual fibers or clus­ters, in pre­de­fined pat­terns or films. This is done through cat­alyt­ic growth pro­cess­ing, with mate­ri­als and process con­di­tions com­pat­i­ble with indus­tri­al requirements.

We devel­op tech­nolo­gies to indus­tri­al­ly man­u­fac­ture car­bon nanos­truc­tures with high pre­ci­sion and desired prop­er­ties on all imag­in­able mate­ri­als. This is our core tech­nol­o­gy, and it is called SmolGROW™. 

Partners/​Customers can license the core tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate solu­tions tai­lored to their unique needs and require­ments. Or, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try part­ners, we devel­op unique appli­ca­tions and prod­ucts that offer a new solu­tions to mar­ket needs. Cur­rent­ly, we have a num­ber of strate­gic devel­op­ment part­ners in our tar­get indus­tries – semi­con­duc­tors and hydrogen.

A passion that never fades

We are sci­en­tists and engi­neers at heart, with a pas­sion for nan­otech­nol­o­gy. We are in the nev­er-end­ing search of how to enhance and fab­ri­cate car­bon nanos­truc­tures with unique prop­er­ties in pre­de­fined pat­terns to enable bet­ter solu­tions with­in sev­er­al indus­tries.
This does not mean that we lack a deep­er pur­pose for what we do. On the con­trary, we do what we do to enable dis­rup­tive solu­tions in sev­er­al areas that are impor­tant to human­i­ty – where con­ven­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy is reach­ing its limits.

Patents and know-how are our livelihood

Smoltek spun out of Dr. Shafiq Kabir’s research on man­u­fac­tur­ing meth­ods of, con­trolled growth of con­duc­tive car­bon nanos­truc­tures with desired prop­er­ties on dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als. Smoltek’s research and devel­op­ment team has since car­ried this research for­ward, made ground­break­ing inno­va­tions, and devel­oped sev­er­al solu­tions for var­i­ous appli­ca­tion areas. This ded­i­cat­ed work has so far result­ed in over 100 grant­ed and pend­ing patents worldwide.

For Smoltek, the patents are cru­cial as we inno­vate to offer tech­nol­o­gy and know-how to com­pa­nies strug­gling with mate­r­i­al engi­neer­ing lim­i­ta­tions. With our patents, we can recoup the sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in research and devel­op­ment of new mate­r­i­al tech­nolo­gies, and in the future pay­ing div­i­dends to those who make these invest­ments possible.

Our know-how and patents form the intel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal upon which our busi­ness mod­el is built.

Vision

We aim to be a glob­al­ly lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment part­ner and sup­pli­er of rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing solu­tions for advanced mate­ri­als engi­neer­ing chal­lenges with­in indus­tries where the need for new dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies is sought for. 

Mission

We devel­op nanos­truc­ture fab­ri­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies to solve advanced mate­ri­als engi­neer­ing prob­lems. This enables man­u­fac­tur­ing small­er and bet­ter micro­elec­tron­ic com­po­nents and dis­rup­tive mate­ri­als solu­tions to meet today’s and tomorrow’s mate­ri­als engi­neer­ing challenges.