Gen-Zero – a new generation of Smoltek’s carbon nanofiber capacitors

Dur­ing 2023 group com­pany Smol­tek Semi has worked on devel­op­ing a new tech­no­logy gen­er­a­tion of the com­pany’s CNF-MIM capa­cit­ors with high volu­met­ric capa­cit­ance dens­ity. Gen-Zero, as it is called, has recently been com­pleted as part of the col­lab­or­a­tion with YAGEO, with Smol­tek Semi own­ing all rights to the result.

Although we have cur­rently con­cluded dis­cus­sions regard­ing a license and ser­vice agree­ment for the capa­cit­ors, YAGEO still has a great interest in our tech­no­logy and will help us eval­u­ate the res­ults of upcom­ing Gen-One capacitors. 

Far­z­an Ghavanini, CTO at Smoltek.

Smol­tek has developed a new tech­no­logy gen­er­a­tion of the com­pany’s CNF-MIM capa­cit­ors that enables a power­ful increase in the capa­cit­ance dens­ity in capacitors.

Håkan Persson, CEO

High capa­cit­ance in a small area – and the import­ance of volu­met­ric capa­cit­ance dens­ity
Smol­tek’s car­bon nan­ofiber-based capa­cit­or tech­no­logy, CNF-MIM, cre­ates high capa­cit­ance val­ues by grow­ing extremely thin and tall car­bon nan­ofibers on top of a sil­ic­on sub­strate. With this tech­no­logy, a very high capa­cit­ance is cre­ated in a very small area. This is fun­da­ment­al and deman­ded from the capa­cit­or man­u­fac­tur­ers and their cus­tom­ers worldwide.

Smol­tek’s tech­no­logy dif­fers from com­pet­it­ors’, which etch deep trenches, or holes, in the sil­ic­on sub­strate. To fairly eval­u­ate the two tech­no­lo­gies, one must look at the volu­met­ric capa­cit­ance dens­ity. This means that you must com­pare how much capa­cit­ance you can get in a giv­en volume in a CNF-MIM capa­cit­or com­pared to that of the competitors.

Far­z­an Ghavanini

With the new Gen-Zero capa­cit­ors, Smol­tek can cre­ate a volu­met­ric capa­cit­ance dens­ity of up to 120 nan­o­farads per square mil­li­meter and per 1 micro­met­er of car­bon nan­ofiber. This is com­par­able to the best capa­cit­ors on the mar­ket. The capa­cit­ance val­ues in the Gen-Zero capa­cit­ors are, how­ever, lower than the com­pet­it­ors. This is due to the fact that Smol­tek Semi has not yet optim­ized the length of the fibers. The car­bon nan­ofibers in Gen-Zero are only a few of micro­met­ers tall. In the next gen­er­a­tion, Gen-One, the ambi­tion is to grow longer car­bon nan­ofibers, up to 10 micro­met­ers tall, which is expec­ted to bring the capa­cit­ance val­ues on par with the competitors.

Although we can provide a very high volu­met­ric capa­cit­ance dens­ity, there is still work to be done to reach our full poten­tial. The ongo­ing Gen-One pro­ject will already dur­ing this year prove the strength and poten­tial of our tech­no­logy to cre­ate a world-lead­ing capa­cit­or product. And, as I said, YAGEO’s tech­nic­al interest in our CNF-MIM tech­no­logy remains, and we will work very closely togeth­er in eval­u­at­ing the upcom­ing Gen-One capacitors.

Far­z­an Ghavanini