 
What are molecular materials?
ZettaCore is a molecular materials company. What's that? Molecular materials comprise a sector of nanotechnology. Engineers at ZettaCore work with molecules that are only a few nanometers in size. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or about 100,000 times less than the width of a strand of your hair.
Molecular materials researchers try to create molecular-scale features that can function to improve the performance of microelectronic devices like logic chips, processor chips, and memory chips. The invention of new and novel molecular-scale elements will create electronic devices of greater density and smaller size, well beyond the physical limits of traditional microelectronics technologies.
Today much of molecular materials research is confined to academic and corporate research labs. However, the need for molecular materials is rapidly being seen in commercial development. Specifically, microelectronic applications are now feasible using hybrid devices -- molecules are used as key elements in many aspects of circuits used in many applications.
ZettaCore is focused on molecular materials applications. Our technology will lead to significant advances in many different electronic applications, playing a key role in new generations of electronic devices, both large and small.
Let’s talk about cell phones for a second.
The very first portable phones were really big and clunky. Then they were small enough to fit in your briefcase. Then your pocket. Then the palm of your hand. But through the years, all cell phones have been based on the same technology. It just kept getting more efficient. And sooner or later, we are going to get that technology as powerful as it can possibly be.
We’re going to hit a wall that conventional technologies can’t get around.
So to keep making technology more powerful and still affordable, we need to find a new way to miniaturize electronic components. One that can be integrated easily with the semiconductor chips that run the cell phones of today. (Not to mention the computers, calculators, digital cameras and so on.)
At ZettaCore, we are finding ways to design and use molecules in many electronic applications, ranging from microelectronics to semiconductors. The technology can lead to major reductions in manufacturing cost, significant advances in density and performance, and devices requiring much less power than current technology.
These technologies, in turn, could form a key component of the manufacturing process used to make new generations of electronic devices, both large and small. ZettaCore has demonstrated its groundbreaking technology in a wide range of electronic applications. These take the form of megabit test chips incorporating its molecular materials as well as packaging substrates or printed circuit boards.
How big is a molecule?
A molecule is a very small structure built out of a fairly small number of atoms. For instance, one water molecule is two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen – H20! ZettaCore’s molecules have a few hundred atoms. And they are very small. Each molecule we use is about 1 nanometer in size. That’s 100,000 times smaller than the width of one strand of your hair. Said another way, in a single drop of water there are over a billion times a billion molecules.
Smaller is better.
A key difference between the ZettaCore™ approach and conventional technologies is that as the size of a component becomes smaller using conventional electronic manufacturing processes, the properties of those semiconductor or polymer materials change in undesirable ways. In our molecules, on the other hand, the properties remain the same. This allows scaling to very small sizes.
Our molecules are also designed to assemble automatically in the right place in an electronic circuit. This allows the molecules to attach only to a particular type of surface (silicon, metals, or organic materials), to pack tightly on that surface, and to orient properly on the surface for optimal operation. Because of these chemical properties, our molecular solutions can be manufactured using equipment and processes common in the semiconductor and microelectronics industries.
The future is getting smaller yet more powerful.
The initial application of our approach involves implementation of our Molecular Interface™ (MI) technology. In this application, the company’s molecular materials as well as proprietary processes, are used to improve the adhesion of copper on organic materials already in use in printed circuit boards and electronic substrates. The key advantage to our approach is that the molecular chemistry promotes the adhesion of copper to a smooth surface, so as to allow the fabrication of smaller features and more sophisticated circuits in a smaller space on existing materials.
Other applications involve more active applications of molecules. One of these is molecular capacitors - devices where electrical energy can be stored in molecules with high efficiency and density. This technology has many applications, ranging from energy storage (e.g., capacitors, batteries, fuel cells) to semiconductor memories. In this case, molecular components are used for storage and standard CMOS circuitry for controlling and accessing the memory array, all manufactured using standard semiconductor facilities. In all cases, a reliance on established fabrication techniques allows the Company to leverage the considerable capital investment of the semiconductor industry, to bring product to market faster, and to take advantage of new techniques as they become available.
So, we’re talking about specially-designed molecules that can solve problems in many existing processes in the manufacture of microelectronic and semiconductor devices. Molecules that can be designed and built to accomplish specific tasks. They can be scaled to very small sizes. They can be made to attach to specific materials. And they can be used in many areas in the manufacturing process.
That’s a huge leap forward in technology. Stemming from really tiny stuff.
ZettaCore molecular memory is based on the properties of specially-designed molecules. We use these molecules to store information by adding or removing electrons and then detecting the charge state of the molecule. The molecules, called multi-porphyrin nanostructures, can be oxidized and reduced (electrons removed or replaced) in a way that is stable, reproducible, and reversible. In this way, molecules can be used as reliable memory locations for electronic devices. In many ways, each molecule acts like an individual capacitor device, similar to a conventional capacitor, but storing only a few electrons of charge that are accessible only at specific, quantized voltage levels. The key difference between ZettaCore memory and conventional memory is that as the size of a memory element becomes smaller, the properties of semiconductor or polymer materials change in undesirable ways, while the properties of our molecular capacitors remain the same. This allows scaling to very small size elements.
We design molecules to have the properties needed for a particular application. The most important property is the oxidation potentials – the energy required to remove one or more electrons. This energy is a quantum mechanical property of the whole molecule and is typically between 100 and 200 mV for each electron removed. For each molecule we design the value is exact and doesn’t vary. We have designed molecules with up to eight oxidation states, meaning we can remove up to eight electrons and detect the resulting state of the molecules using distinct, discrete voltages. Using multi-state molecular capacitors with quantized energy states, we can reliably store more than one bit of information in a single memory location.
Another property we design into our molecules is chemical self-assembly. This allows the molecules to attach only to a particular type of surface (for example, gold, silicon, various metals and oxides), to pack tightly on that surface, and to align properly on the surface for electronic operation. Because of chemical self-assembly, ZettaCore molecular memory chips can be manufactured using equipment and processes common in the semiconductor industry. Molecules are applied to an entire wafer by spraying or dipping and attach only to those exposed surfaces they are designed for. Unattached molecules are simply washed away from the other surfaces.
The diagram below shows the basic concepts of ZettaCore molecular memory. An individual molecule is shown in the lower left corner. This molecule has four states, so it stores two bits of information. Using chemical self-assembly techniques, the molecules are applied to all of the memory elements of an array. At each location in the array there may be between a few thousand and a million molecules (depending on the size of memory elements and the type of device structures being used). This provides excellent signal to noise characteristics and defect tolerance through redundancy. The failure of any single molecule will not affect the operation of a memory element.
The array is connected to custom-designed I/O circuits (not shown) fabricated using conventional logic that read and write the array.
Simplified diagram of ZettaCore molecules in a memory array.
The ability to integrate ZettaCore molecular technology with state-of-the-art semiconductor technology allows accelerated development of hybrid chips that leverage both the advantages of molecular storage and the substantial capital investment in the semiconductor manufacturing industry.
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