We enable the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try to con­tin­ue to devel­op ever­more effi­cient electronics.

Smoltek enables the pro­duc­tion of small­er and bet­ter micro­elec­tron­ic com­po­nents through solu­tions for smarter inte­gra­tion. The company’s dis­rup­tive tech­nol­o­gy offers a broad field of pro­duc­tion process­es for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try, among those CMOS-com­pli­ant devices, to meet today’s and tomorrow’s mate­ri­als engi­neer­ing challenges.

One exam­ple of how and where Smoltek’s tech­nol­o­gy can be imple­ment­ed is in minia­tur­ized capac­i­tors for inte­gra­tion into semi­con­duc­tor circuits—a crit­i­cal appli­ca­tion in the advanced pack­ag­ing of high-per­for­mance processors.

The semiconductor market

The semi­con­duc­tor mar­ket is large, very large. Pure gigan­tic. There are semi­con­duc­tors today in almost every product—which is why we, over the years, have had close dia­logues with sev­er­al large cus­tomers and part­ners, from both a tech­ni­cal and busi­ness per­spec­tive, to iden­ti­fy which part of the semi­con­duc­tor mar­ket we should address with our tech­nol­o­gy. The con­clu­sion is that we will first and fore­most focus on dis­crete super-thin capac­i­tors for mobile appli­ca­tions where the capac­i­tor man­u­fac­tur­ers are our customers.

This is a huge mul­ti-bil­lion market—where the major play­ers today are on the Unit­ed States’ west coast and South­east Asia.

The glob­al semi­con­duc­tor mar­ket is esti­mat­ed to grow at 6% CAGR by $ 84.41 bil­lion dur­ing the fore­cast peri­od 2021–2025. (Mar­ket­watch, July 1, 2021)

Semiconductor evolution—and the problem we solve

As the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try has been able to con­tin­ue minia­tur­iz­ing the tran­sis­tors in proces­sor chips, the chip’s per­for­mance increas­es, which gives us faster and increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful com­put­ers, tablets, mobile phones, etc. A con­se­quence of this devel­op­ment is that the elec­tri­cal volt­age in the chip must be reduced, which entails an increased need for so-called decou­pling capac­i­tors near the chip. These capac­i­tors need to be extreme­ly thin to place these close enough to the active proces­sor. Smoltek’s car­bon nanofiber-based (CNF-MIM) capac­i­tors can solve this par­tic­u­lar problem.

A smart­phone con­sists of many com­po­nents. Mind­bog­gling many. For all these parts to work togeth­er, the entire sys­tem, in each mobile, needs the sup­port of about a thou­sand capac­i­tors. Our focus is to sup­port a sub­set of these con­nect­ed to the heart in the mobile device, name­ly the appli­ca­tion proces­sor, a niche that, in prin­ci­ple, all major play­ers are inter­est­ed in. And con­sid­er­ing that about 1.5 bil­lion appli­ca­tion proces­sors are pro­duced annu­al­ly, the num­ber of capac­i­tors that need to be pro­duced will be quite large.

The market for our capacitors

The mar­ket for our capac­i­tor tech­nol­o­gy is in spe­cial­ized elec­tron­ic com­po­nents used in a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions, pri­mar­i­ly in the field of semi­con­duc­tors and inte­grat­ed cir­cuits. The capac­i­tors are spe­cial­ly designed to offer high capac­i­tance val­ues in a com­pact form factor. 

Exam­ples of areas of appli­ca­tion are:
Con­sumer elec­tron­ics – Smart­phones, tablets and portable devices where the capac­i­tors are used in the appli­ca­tion proces­sor, which place high demands on the com­bi­na­tion of high per­for­mance in a small form fac­tor. With our tech­nol­o­gy for ultra-thin capac­i­tors, we can become a lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy sup­pli­er in this seg­ment, as we can meet those require­ments. It enables, for exam­ple, our capac­i­tors to be placed clos­er to the appli­ca­tion proces­sor com­pared to com­pet­ing tech­nolo­gies, which is very impor­tant for, like for exam­ple, mobile phone man­u­fac­tur­ers as it increas­es sys­tem (AP/​SoC – Sys­tem on Chip¹) per­for­mance.

The auto­mo­tive indus­try – Our capac­i­tors are suit­able for var­i­ous elec­tri­cal sys­tems in the auto­mo­tive indus­try where tech­nol­o­gy has become more advanced, with exten­sive soft­ware imple­men­ta­tion and many com­plex safe­ty sys­tems. This means that there are strict require­ments for sta­ble volt­age lev­els and reli­able func­tion of impor­tant com­po­nents, which are chal­lenges our capac­i­tor tech­nol­o­gy can meet. 

The aero­space and defense indus­try – Tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments require high-per­for­mance capac­i­tors to meet the strict spec­i­fi­ca­tions found in radar sys­tems, com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment, and oth­er avionics. 

Radio fre­quen­cy (RF) – Our tech­nol­o­gy can be used in so-called RF cir­cuits where there are high require­ments for a very small form fac­tor. In RF, our tech­nol­o­gy can be used to con­trol imped­ance (elec­tri­cal resis­tance to alter­nat­ing cur­rent) and improve the per­for­mance of wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices such as mobile phones and Wi-Fi routers. 

Indus­try and man­u­fac­tur­ing – In indus­tri­al automa­tion and con­trol sys­tems, our capac­i­tor tech­nol­o­gy can be used to ensure the high demands placed on sta­ble and accu­rate volt­age lev­els, con­tribut­ing to the reli­a­bil­i­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ing processes. 

In sum­ma­ry, our tech­nol­o­gy is dri­ven by the increas­ing demand for minia­tur­ized, high-per­for­mance elec­tron­ic devices in a vari­ety of indus­tries. As the devel­op­ment of semi­con­duc­tor tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues and the need for small­er and more effi­cient com­po­nents increas­es, we expect the mar­ket for our capac­i­tor tech­nol­o­gy to expand. 

Today, we focus par­tic­u­lar­ly on the mobile mar­ket (con­sumer elec­tron­ics), where the need for small form fac­tors and high per­for­mance rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges and opportunities. 

As an exam­ple, the mar­ket for land­side-mount­ed decou­pling capac­i­tors for appli­ca­tion proces­sors in pre­mi­um priced mobile phones is pre­dict­ed to have an expect­ed aver­age annu­al growth rate of about 3.6% CAGR, increas­ing from about 3.6 bil­lion decou­pling capac­i­tors in 2023 to about 4.6 bil­lion decou­pling capac­i­tors in 2030. This is a sub-mar­ket that we are ini­tial­ly targeting.

Learn more

Rec­om­mend­ed read­ing for you who want to learn more about our ultra-thin CNF-MIN decou­pling capacitors:

1. AP/​SoC is a type of inte­grat­ed cir­cuit (IC) design that com­bines many, or all, high-lev­el func­tion­al ele­ments of an elec­tron­ic device on a sin­gle chip, rather than using sep­a­rate com­po­nents mount­ed on a moth­er­board as is done in tra­di­tion­al elec­tron­ics design. ↩︎