We are engaged in the business of developing, commercializing and licensing
proprietary processes and technologies for the $350+ billion semiconductor industry.
Our lead technology, named Mears Silicon TechnologyTM, or MST®, is a thin-film
of reengineered silicon, typically 100 to 300 angstroms (or approximately 20
to 60 silicon atomic unit cells) thick. MST can be applied as a transistor channel
enhancement to CMOS-type transistors, the most widely used transistor type in
the semiconductor industry. MST is our proprietary and patent-protected performance
enhancement technology that we believe addresses a number of key engineering
challenges facing the semiconductor industry. We believe that by incorporating
MST, transistors can be smaller, with increased speed, reliability and energy
efficiency. In addition, since MST is an additive and low-cost technology, we
believe it can be deployed on an industrial scale, with machines commonly used
in semiconductor manufacturing. We believe that MST can be widely incorporated
into the most common types of semiconductor products, including analog, logic,
optical and memory integrated circuits.
We do not intend to design or manufacture integrated circuits directly. Instead,
we intend to develop and license technologies and processes that will offer
the designers and manufacturers of integrated circuits a low-cost solution to
the industry’s need for greater performance and lower power consumption.
Our customers and partners include or are expected to include:
· foundries, which manufacture integrated circuits on behalf of fabless
manufacturers;
· integrated device manufacturers, or IDMs, which are the fully integrated
designers and manufacturers of integrated circuits;
· fabless semiconductor manufacturers, which are designers of integrated
circuits that outsource the manufacture of their chips to foundries;
· original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, which manufacture the epitaxial,
or EPI, deposition machines used to deposit semiconductor layers, such as the
MST® film onto the base silicon wafer; and
· electronic design automation companies, which make tools used throughout
the industry to simulate the effects of using different materials, design structures
and process technologies on the performance of semiconductor products.
We intend to generate revenue through licensing arrangements whereby foundries
and IDMs pay us a license fee for their use of MST technology in the manufacture
of silicon wafers as well as a royalty for each silicon wafer or device that
incorporates our MST technology. We also intend to enter into licensing arrangements
with fabless semiconductor manufacturers pursuant to which we will charge them
a royalty for each device they sell that incorporates our MST technology.
Recent years have seen a remarkable proliferation of consumer and commercial
products, especially in wireless, automotive and mobile electronic devices.
The growth of the Internet and cloud computing has provided people with new
ways to create, store and share information. At the same time, the increasing
use of electronics in cars, buildings, appliances and other consumer products
is creating a broad landscape of “smart” devices and the evolution
of wearable technologies and The Internet of Things.
These developments depend, in large part, on integrated circuits, or microchips,
which are sets of electronic circuits on a single chip of semiconductor material,
normally silicon. It is common for a single semiconductor chip to combine many
components (processor, communications, memory, custom logic, input/output) resulting
in highly complex chip designs. Transistors are the building blocks of integrated
circuits and the most complex semiconductor chips today contain more than a
billion transistors, each of which may have features that are much less than
1/1,000th the diameter of a human hair.
The most widely used transistors in semiconductor chips today are based on
the CMOS technology. Among its many attributes, CMOS allows for a higher density
of transistors on a chip and lower power usage than non-CMOS technologies.
6.48%