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.