Archer Materials Limited (ASX:AXE) has strategically expanded its access to institutional deep-tech infrastructure that overcomes commercial and technological barriers to biochip development.
CEO, Dr Mohammad Choucair, said Archer is now directly accessing world-class analytical facilities with state-of-the-art, atom- scale quality control capabilities.
He said the infrastructure access is necessary to carry out the company’s biochip development. Specifically, it allows Archer to qualify its semiconductor device production processes as the company advances towards sub-10 nm biochip feature sizes.
Dr Choucair said Archer is strategically securing access to local institutional deep-tech infrastructure.
The successful development of Archer’s biochip requires the analysis of semiconductor device materials components and the establishment of quality control processes at the nanoscale (one nanometre being a billionth of a metre). This is because Archer’s biochip technology integrates materials like graphene, which is one-atom ‘thick’ in size (i.e. a fraction of a nanometre), and device features that are nanometres in size.
There are very few instruments and facilities in the world today available to perform such sophisticated device and materials’ analysis on precision-engineered nanoscale devices. Archer is now utilising an outstanding suite of institutional deep tech infrastructure resources to directly analyse its prototype biochips, which builds on the company’s access to a A$150 million research and prototype semiconductor foundry where Archer fabricates its devices.
The specialist instruments and facilities that Archer newly accessed include multimillion-dollar advanced spectrometers for chemical and biological imaging at the nanoscale and protein production facilities in state-of-art laboratories. All of Archer’s intellectual property rights and title to pre-existing materials are unaffected by its access to the infrastructure, facilities, and instrumentation outlined in this announcement.
We are very pleased to secure access to world-class facilities that would otherwise be extremely costly to purchase and operate ourselves. Archer’s growth has involved integrating the company’s early-stage tech development within institutional scale operations, and this ultimately translates to maintaining a strong cash position and no corporate debt,” Dr Choucair said.
