A team of University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Booth School of Business students won second place in the 9th Annual Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge put on by UChicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
The startup, K1 Semiconductor, is commercializing a semiconductor wafer-splitting process developed in the lab of Prof. Supratik Guha. The technique could enable more high-performance semiconductor materials to be used across industries, improving the efficiency and economics of chip manufacturing.
With the prize money of $668,000, the team hopes to set up a new processing facility in Chicago and begin serving customers later this year.
“Winning second place was fantastic,” said Connor Horn, a PhD student whose research formed the basis of the technique. “We've seen a lot of excitement now from investors because of the publicity of the program.”
Technique allows material to be used 20 times
In electronics, thin semiconductor materials such as silicon provide the substrate for integrated circuits. Called wafers, these substrate materials are often used only one time during the chip creation process. Whereas silicon is relatively cheap, other materials like silicon carbide and diamond hold tremendous promise for certain applications but have traditionally been too expensive for widespread adoption.
The UChicago PME + Booth team developed a new technique that splits the used part of the wafer off, leaving the rest of the wafer material to be reused. Their technique involves applying a layer of highly stressed metal on top of the wafer, then starting a crack within the wafer. Having solved the equations for how the crack will propagate through the material, they found they could propagate that crack laterally, allowing them to peel off the top layer, leaving the rest of the material to be reused.
“We essentially slice these valuable semiconductor materials so we can get more use out of them,” Horn said. “Now we can use them 20 times rather than once.”
Their startup name is a reference to K1, the stress intensity factor in fracture mechanics. “It’s the variable that you solve for to figure out if you can split a wafer,” Horn said. “All of our technology comes from this one variable. So we named the company after it.”
Their process could reduce the price of final devices by at least 25 percent and could help make more expensive semiconductor materials, like diamond, more feasible for electronics.
“Diamond is an attractive material for electronics because of its unrivalled high thermal conductivity,” said Sagar Kumar Seth, a PhD student and member of the team. “But it is super expensive to manufacture. With our technique, we believe we can unlock these markets for using diamond in the future.”
While other companies on the market have different techniques for splitting wafers, they all involve “more aggressive methods,” said Xella Doi, a PhD student and member of the team. “And they are more expensive and aren’t material agnostic. We have the cheapest, most efficient process that can be applied to pretty much any material.”
The team also includes UChicago Booth students Joe McDonald and Hashaam Asif.
Developed in the UChicago PME ecosystem
Though the technology has been under development for years, the team just founded the start-up this year after taking entrepreneurship courses and building a business plan. The New Venture Challenge—the first real market test of their idea—also awarded them the Moonshot Prize at the competition, which gives $25,000 to a team whose unique technology is catalyzing innovative solutions to global challenges.
“We were one of the only deep tech companies in this competition, so it was really exciting and encouraging that people wanted to support deep tech startups, even at this stage,” Seth said.
Now, the team will set up a facility to begin serving customers, which includes companies that make semiconductor products. The team is especially excited about the potential for their technique to help pave the way for quantum technologies. It would not have been possible without the support and culture that UChicago PME provides, they said.
“UChicago PME has such great resources that allowed us to develop this technology faster than we would not have been able to do anywhere else,” Horn said.
“Just having other peers at UChicago PME that are also trying to do startups—the whole ecosystem has really pushed us to think in this direction, to build it as a business,” Seth said.