Atomera Incorporated, a semiconductor materials and licensing company, has announced an agreement to license Atomera’s Mears Silicon Technology (MST) technology, a patented, quantum-engineered material which can enhance transistors to deliver significantly better performance in today’s electronics, to a provider of RF products. Under the terms of this license, the company plans to integrate MST technology into next-generation RF products for mobile 5G markets. Atomera’s MST is a patented, quantum-engineered material that can enhance transistors to deliver significantly better performance in today’s electronics.
The customer (did not announce details on who this might be) who executed a license with Atomera gave their designers a clear path to developing even more advanced devices based on Atomera's MST semiconductor technology. With the powerful combination of their partner's RF technology expertise and their foundry's manufacturing capabilities, Atomera believes MST can enable new, higher performance devices and products for the 5G cellular market.
The RF device market is growing rapidly. As an example, RF switches are used extensively in wireless systems like mobile phones for routing signals from the antennas to the transmit-and-receive chains. They are one of the highest volume semiconductor devices used today as several of these devices are typically contained in phones or IoT systems. 5G cellular products will incorporate a larger number of RF switches than current models. The RF switch market was valued at $2.9 billion in 2018 and is projected to reach $4.9 billion by 2025, according to InForGrowth. Moreover, according to recent estimates by Gartner, 5G capable phones will grow their share of the market from 10% in 2020 to 56% by 2023.
Atomera’s integration license provides rights to this fabless company to design MST technology into their advanced RF SOI technology platform. Atomera will work with this large fabless company, and its foundry partner to integrate MST technology into their production environment to deliver significantly better RF products for the mobile 5G market. The license agreement is non-exclusive and the terms are confidential.
MST is an ultra-thin film of reengineered semiconductor that incorporates layers of non-semiconductor material. This engineered silicon lattice has unique electrical properties that address several key device engineering challenges the industry currently faces as it seeks to reduce costs and lower power consumption. That means consumer electronics, such as mobile phones can have longer battery life, IoT devices can be made smaller, and cloud computing will become even more powerful.
Manufacturers can address their yield, power and performance challenges at a fraction of the cost of alternative approaches. Atomera breathes new life into semiconductor fabs by providing up to a full node of performance benefits to existing fab processes, empowering competitive new product designs in existing fabs. Atomera’s patented material technology enables more efficient and better controlled current flow, leading to dramatic improvements in device performance and power efficiency.
