Why Smoltek’s CNF-MIM tech could revolutionize ultra-thin capacitors

Philip Less­ner, CTO of the YAGEO Group – one of the world’s largest man­u­fac­tur­ers of pass­ive com­pon­ents – has been closely fol­low­ing both the mar­ket and the devel­op­ment of Smol­tek’s CNF-MIM tech­no­logy over the past six months. In this wide-ran­ging inter­view, which fol­lows on from his pre­vi­ous inter­view in June, Dr. Less­ner shares his obser­va­tions on recent pro­gress and thoughts on future potential.

New dielectric stack shows stable performance

When asked about Smol­tek’s devel­op­ment over the past year, Less­ner imme­di­ately points to two sig­ni­fic­ant advances.

The first is the switch to a new dielec­tric stack that has increased the dielec­tric con­stant by more than 1.5 times. It’s worth not­ing that this new stack, developed in col­lab­or­a­tion with an aca­dem­ic lab in Korea, is now show­ing what Less­ner describes as “very stable per­form­ance under heat and voltage” in YAGEO’s own elec­tric­al test labs.

Improved nanofiber growth points to higher capacitance

The second break­through that draws Less­ner­’s atten­tion is more visu­al. After examin­ing scan­ning elec­tron micro­scope pho­tos of our latest nan­ofiber growth res­ults, he spe­cific­ally praises the team’s achieve­ment in grow­ing long, ver­tic­al car­bon nan­ofibers that main­tain their dir­ec­tion without tangling – a cru­cial advance­ment that he describes as “very impressive.”

This abil­ity to grow taller, well-aligned nan­ofibers is key to achiev­ing high­er capa­cit­ance. Accord­ing to Less­ner, increas­ing the height from about 4 microns to 10 microns is one of the crit­ic­al steps in Smol­tek’s devel­op­ment plan. The goal is to match the industry bench­mark of 1.5 micro­farads per square mil­li­meter, cur­rently achieved by TSMC, the world’s lead­ing man­u­fac­turer of ultra-thin capacitors.

A fundamental advantage in how we build

One of the most inter­est­ing parts of the inter­view comes when Less­ner explains what he sees as a fun­da­ment­al advant­age in Smol­tek’s man­u­fac­tur­ing approach.

While our com­pet­it­ors like TSMC, Murata and Sam­sung use what he calls a “sub­tract­ive technology”—they need to etch trenches in the substrate—Smoltek does the oppos­ite. Our “addit­ive tech­no­logy,” as Less­ner explains it, builds up the struc­ture by adding mater­i­al exactly where needed. Why does this mat­ter? Because accord­ing to Less­ner, it res­ults in a more mech­an­ic­ally stable substrate.

Future-proof technology

When dis­cuss­ing future pos­sib­il­it­ies, Less­ner points to anoth­er sig­ni­fic­ant advant­age that sets Smol­tek apart: our abil­ity to grow car­bon nan­ofibers on vari­ous sub­strates, not just silicon.

This might not seem revolu­tion­ary until you con­sider, as Less­ner points out, that major play­ers like Intel are act­ively pur­su­ing glass inter­poser sub­strates. The fact that our tech­no­logy could poten­tially work with mater­i­als like glass or alu­min­um opens up excit­ing pos­sib­il­it­ies for future applications.

Development timeline towards commercial product

For those fol­low­ing our pro­gress toward com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion, Less­ner out­lines what he expects to see ahead. Based on his dis­cus­sions with our CTO, he hopes to see a first product in early 2025, achiev­ing about one-third of the mar­ket-lead­ing per­form­ance levels pre­vi­ously men­tioned. By late 2025 or early 2026, he believes the tech­no­logy could match these per­form­ance levels.

Growing market opportunities

While mobile phones cur­rently drive the mar­ket for ultra-thin capa­cit­ors, Less­ner sees AI data cen­ters as the next major growth opportunity.

His explan­a­tion of the power require­ments for next-gen­er­a­tion AI pro­cessors, par­tic­u­larly GPUs, is eye-open­ing: they may need up to 1000 watts at one volt or less—meaning peak cur­rents of 1000 amps. This is where Smol­tek’s ultra-thin capa­cit­ors could shine, enabling ver­tic­al power deliv­ery sys­tems placed dir­ectly under the processor—significantly redu­cing power loss and improv­ing efficiency.

Strong competition but unique position

Less­ner acknow­ledges the strong com­pet­i­tion from industry giants like TSMC, Murata and Sam­sung, not­ing that they are “fierce com­pet­it­ors” and “abso­lute giants” in the elec­tron­ics industry.

How­ever, he emphas­izes what makes Smol­tek dif­fer­ent: “You have a unique tech­no­logy that’s dif­fer­ent from the tech­no­logy that they’ve inves­ted in,” he notes. Even more encour­aging is his belief that our tech­no­logy “has the poten­tial to exceed the per­form­ance of the incum­bent tech­no­logy once it’s fully developed.”

I invite you to watch the full inter­view above, where Less­ner shares more detailed insights about our tech­no­logy and mar­ket pos­i­tion. His ana­lys­is provides a valu­able per­spect­ive on both our cur­rent pos­i­tion and future poten­tial in the ultra-thin capa­cit­or market.