Domestic Semiconductor Fab for Fast, Agile, and Inexpensive Chipset Production

Atomic Semi is developing a semiconductor manufacturing system that will be a desktop-sized, vertically integrated fab capable of producing CMOS chips in under 24 hours. By vertically integrating and applying modern processes and technologies, the company has managed to reduce its capital requirements significantly, estimating the total bill of materials (BOM) for initialá fabs to be less than $1 million. However, this cost decreases significantly in mass production, where we believe we can achieve a 10x cost savings in our BOM. The key to this innovation lies in simplifying and building essential tools, such as deposition systems, etching tools, and lithography setups. The focus of Atomic Semiĺs technical development is on building the essential tools required for fabrication, including Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), Reactive Ion Etching (RIE), masked and direct-write lithography, rapid thermal annealing (RTA), and advanced inspection tools. Once these tools are developed and reach the desired level of maturity, the company plans to integrate and automate them for efficient, programmatic process experimentation. This will allow Atomic Semi to streamline the fabrication processes to reduce the number of steps and improve cycle times for rapid prototyping from its current 6 month lead time down to a day.á