Arrowhead Research Corporation to Form New Nanotech Subsidiary - News Item

Arrowhead Research Corporation announced today that it has entered into an agreement to form a new majority-owned subsidiary to commercialise an ultrathin crystal film (nanofilm) technology that has been developed by Dr. Harry A. Atwater and his research group at the California Institute of Technology. The agreement between Arrowhead Research Corporation, Dr. Atwater, and Caltech provides for the grant of a fully-paid exclusive license to the new company to utilize the technology for commercial application.

The technology is expected to provide advancements in semiconductor technology, in which device active region optical and electrical properties can be optimally engineered independently of the underlying substrate's thermal, dielectric and mechanical properties. The technology enables fabrication of high-quality single crystal semiconductor (e.g., InP, Ge, GaAs) and oxide (e.g., BaTiO₃, LiNbO₃, PMNPT) nanometer thickness films as surface layers transferred onto low-cost substrates (Si, Sapphire, glass) and would enable superior device/system performance at lower cost in applications such as photonics/ULSI electronics integration, light-emitting diode and laser arrays, HBTs for wireless communications and high efficiency solar cells.

Arrowhead has also agreed to sponsor research at Caltech under the direction of Dr. Atwater to exploit a new ferroelectric film synthesis technique recently developed by the Atwater group to make nanoscale piezoelectric devices suitable for integration into microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) on silicon substrates.

Posted 9^th March 2004