Semiconductor industry specialist Archer Materials (ASX: AXE) has advanced the development a miniaturised version of its Biochip graphene field effect transistor (gFET).
The breakthrough was designed and fabricated at its commercial foundry partner in the Netherlands, Applied Nanolayers (ANL).
The new gFET chip design has been significantly reduced in size in comparison to the earlier designs of 10mm x 10mm to 1.5mm x 1.5mm, or by 97%. The chip was fabricated on a whole four-inch wafer with 1,375 gFET chips, compared to the 45 gFET chips produced using earlier designs in previous four-inch wafer fabrication runs.
The miniaturised gFET chip design reduces the fabrication cost per chip produced by whole wafer runs and aims at improving foundry readiness.
The wafer has been diced and assembled at Archer’s outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing (OSAT) partner, AOI Electronics in Japan. The OSAT process includes moulding, dicing, and lead frame design for this dedicated wafer assembly. These new capabilities are key in advancing the Biochip development to interfacing and integration with miniaturised gFET chip sensor designs.
The assembled chips are currently undergoing testing at Archer.
The Archer Biochip contains a sensing region of which the gFET is the core component. Each gFET chip contains multiple gFETs, each of which is a transistor, which acts as a sensor. Archer has miniaturised the total chip size by redesigning the layout of the circuits creating gFET transistors.
The team is currently undertaking experiments with its Biochip gFET for at home testing of chronic kidney disease (CK”) and these miniaturised gFET sensors will be used for this functionality.
“Archer is proactively reducing device fabrication costs and paving the way for a wafer-scale run of over a thousand miniaturised gFET chips,” Greg English, Executive Chair of Archer, said.
“The team has been able to achieve this significant step by applying its know-how in gFET chip design.
“By working with Applied Nanolayers and AOI Electronics on the miniaturised gFET chips, we have successfully proved the fabless commercial model to support development of the Biochip and strengthen our relationships with semiconductor supply-chain partners.”