National Science Foundation awards MONSTR Sense Technologies SBIR Phase II Grant to Transform Inspection of Semiconductors for Electric Vehicles
MONSTR Sense® is developing new equipment for inspecting silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), popular semiconductors for high-power and high-frequency electronics
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES, January 26, 2023 – MONSTR Sense Technologies, LLC is pleased to announce that they have been awarded a $1 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to validate specific use cases of MONSTR Sense’s ultrafast technology for semiconductor inspection, specifically for the compound semiconductors used in rapid charging, 5G devices, and microLEDs. The funding will allow the company to conduct rigorous benchmark testing, and to develop a new turn-key system to expand their addressable market. The Phase II award is based on successful completion of Phase I objectives. In Phase I MONSTR Sense developed and demonstrated a novel approach to ultrafast lifetime imaging. They demonstrated a massive reduction in the acquisition time of ultrafast lifetime images from hours to seconds, and the project culminated in the development of a new product: a laser-scanning microscope called NESSIE® that is optimized for semiconductor research applications.
The semiconductor industry requires near perfection of the entire substrate on which advanced chips are made, called a wafer, to ensure that the chips work. Wafer inspection is needed to determine the semiconductor wafer quality before it is sold to a fab for chip development, and wafer inspection is important for finding issues in the development process before those in-line issues lead to, for instance, the need to scrap a large batch of expensive wafers. Currently most chips are made on silicon wafers, and inspection tools find defects by looking for microscopic imperfections in the surface.
Though conventional methods for inspecting silicon are very good, conventional methods fail for inspecting the semiconductors needed in electric vehicles and 5G applications. These applications require wide-gap materials such as SiC and GaN. While wide-gap semiconductor wafers contain many imperfections in the surface, most of these imperfections are not “killer” defects; defects that lead to a device failure. Therefore finding defects in these materials requires a rapid imaging method that is sensitive to killer defects instead of surface imperfections. The inspection problem for the semiconductor industry is compounded by the rapid growth of these demanding applications. Without the ability to detect killer defects, device yield remains low.
“With the help of America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, we are moving technology that has been exclusively used for fundamental science into an industrial application that impacts everyone,” said MONSTR Sense president and co-founder Eric Martin, PhD. “High tech chips, like those used in every electric vehicle and smartphone, rely on the most advanced technologies from scientific labs. However, crossing the chasm between doing science and building a reliable tool in a sustaining market is challenging. As we have commercialized a tool for science, the NSF has made it possible for us to continue innovating at MONSTR Sense and to find this important application of our technology. This Phase II funding enables us to next build a turn-key and user-friendly tool that is optimized for the high-power semiconductor inspection market.”
By developing effective wafer inspection, MONSTR Sense is helping to improve the efficiency of manufacturing electric vehicles, 5G electronics, and microLEDs. Capable quality control helps ensure that devices don’t fail when you need them, and it makes the next generation of electronic devices more affordable.
About the U.S. NSF’s Small Business Programs
America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards more than $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $2 million to support research and development, helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.8 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.
For more information, visit seedfund.nsf.gov.
About MONSTR Sense Technologies
Founded in 2018 by Eric Martin, PhD and Professor Steve Cundiff, MONSTR Sense is a manufacturing company spun out of the University of Michigan’s Innovation Partnerships. The company’s first products, BIGFOOT™ and NESSIE, are equipment designed for scientists looking to augment their labs with ultrafast technology that also offers sub-micron spatial resolution. The goal of MONSTR Sense is to offer semiconductor characterization solutions for all stages of the semiconductor development process from fundamental science through in-line inspection in manufacturing facilities.
MONSTR Sense has now been awarded two prestigious NSF SBIR grants.