The technology breaks through the barriers limiting silicon's advancement and delivers customers higher efficiency, smaller and more cost-effective products
LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., May 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- iDEAL Semiconductor, a fabless semiconductor company focused on delivering breakthrough power efficiency, today announced the general availability of its patented SuperQ technology. SuperQ can reduce power lossf in many applications including data centers, electric vehicles, solar panels, motor drives, medical devices, and white goods. Its elevated efficiency reduces carbon footprints and allows for a more sustainable future.
iDEAL's engineers and scientists reinvented the power device architecture and delivered a step-function increase in performance. The technology is based in silicon, which represents 95% of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity, and is forward compatible with future power semiconductor materials.
The basic power semiconductor structure has seen limited innovation in the past two decades and silicon power device performance has plateaued. Attempts to further increase performance have focused on materials versus expanding the limits of silicon. Through scientific research and engineering at the atomic level, iDEAL Semiconductor has created a novel architecture that sets the next frontier of performance and debunks the idea that the industry has reached the end of the road for silicon advancement.
"iDEAL Semiconductor is one of the only companies focused on both process and architecture for building power devices. Our improvements in silicon rival the improvements offered by other materials, but with silicon's manufacturability, availability, and reliability," said Mark Granahan, CEO and co-founder of iDEAL Semiconductor. "Through collaborations in the U.S. with Applied Materials and Polar Semiconductor, we have unlocked previously unimaginable performance gains. Material agnostic, we address the increasing demand for power devices. With the current global push for a greener future, we are thrilled about the role we play in making products more sustainable while also showcasing what investment in America's semiconductor industry can accomplish."
Achieved through science and engineering at the atomic level, SuperQ delivers record-setting resistance per unit area (RSP). Initially targeting voltages up to 850 volt (V), the technology equips system engineers with improved power semiconductor devices such as diodes, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBTs) and integrated circuits (ICs). For example, SuperQ-based 200V MOSFETs deliver 6x lower resistance than existing silicon and 1.6x lower resistance than GaN. Motor drive inverters designed with SuperQ technology can save up to 50% of power losses. The technology is manufactured using state-of-the-art complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) equipment.
The launch comes on the heels of a Series C funding round bringing total investment to over $75 million. iDEAL's investors are U.S.-based, high-wealth family offices and successful business entrepreneurs with an interest in growing the domestic semiconductor industry. Leveraging the capital, iDEAL Semiconductor is aggressively expanding its hiring, product proliferation and U.S. manufacturing capacity.
For more information, visit www.idealsemi.com.
About iDEAL Semiconductor
Founded in the Lehigh Valley in 2017, iDEAL Semiconductor Devices, Inc. is an industry-leading developer of next generation silicon power devices. Its products are developed using a novel semiconductor technology, SuperQ™, based on a newly observed phenomenon that delivers dramatic semiconductor energy efficiency using conventional CMOS manufacturing techniques. The platform technology, applicable across a wide range of products, applications, and semiconductor materials, is purpose-built to mitigate power loss in every application and will provide greener energy usage for the next generation.
