Archer Materials Limited (“Archer”, the “Company”, “ASX: AXE”), a semiconductor company advancing the quantum computing and medical diagnostics industries, has had its advanced graphene field effect transistor (“gFET”) chip design validated by a commercial foundry partner in the Netherlands with a whole four-inch wafer run.
The new advanced gFET device designs have been fabricated and the whole wafer run foundry process was successful (Image 1). The electronic and spectroscopic characteristics of the gFET chips, and the foundry fabrication process yield, are consistent with what Archer expected. The gFET chips are also compatible with Archer’s biochip system platform.
The advanced gFET design now creates the potential for an early biochip platform that has single-device multiplexing, meaning the biochip technology would be able to sense different liquid samples to test for multiple diseases at once. Archer now intends to integrate more functionality on the biochip, and optimise the device size and geometry to build advanced sensing regions.
Commenting on the validation of the advanced gFET design, Dr Mohammad Choucair, CEO of Archer, said, “Archer’s biochip graphene sensor technology has essentially undergone translation from design to scalable semiconductor processing in a commercial foundry, which is both a key technology development and commercial milestone.
“The whole wafer fabrication of the gFET device design is a significant step towards industrial production. Archer is continuing to strengthen its relationships with global foundry partners to deliver these chips using a streamlined ‘fabless’ commercialisation model.”
On 31 July 2023, Archer announced that its advanced gFET design had been sent to a commercial foundry partner in the Netherlands for a whole four-inch wafer run for validation. In parallel, Archer’s first-generation gFET design was submitted to a commercial foundry partner in Germany for a Multi-Project Wafer (“MPW”) run which is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, as announced on 13 July 2023. An MPW is where Archer’s device design is imprinted on a small area of a wafer with the designs of other companies on the same wafer. The MPW fabrication is independent to Archer’s dedicated whole wafer run.