Company Profile

In 2010 Amberwave Systems Corporation that had been focused to semiconductor applications closed down. The firm had been addressing commercialization of Silicon Germanium-graded buffer technology from MIT and in 2008 had acquired anoher SBIR-involved firm - Aonex Technologies. Following that close-down, several employees purchased assets from the company and started Amberwave, Inc.. Since the beginning, AmberWave Systems has been focused on building bridges between advanced materials science developed at leading universities and their industrial applications. AmberWave Systems continues to develop industry partnerships to explore applications of its innovations. These relationships have led, for instance, to the development of Strained Silicon, a technology that is now used at the heart of advanced microchips to improve performance and decrease power consumption. If you own a computer purchased new during the past three years, it more than likely contains AmberWave Systems’ technology buried deep in the microprocessor. AmberWave Systems has expanded the number of both its university partnerships and its industry partners. The company’s current materials platforms encompass applications as diverse as next-generation semiconductor memory, solar energy and advanced battery technologies. From the success of the commercialization of Strained Silicon in the CMOS semiconductor industry, to current work on advanced materials for the 21st Century, AmberWave Systems is leading the way in materials science and applications. At AmberWave Systems, using an intellectual property business model of innovation, patenting, licensing and tech transfer was recognized early on as the best way to achieve efficiency in bringing new materials to users. This IP model has been successful at bringing the company’s first technology platform – SiGe for strained silicon – to the consumer; we are dedicated to the continued effective use of this model. In conjunction with its university research projects, the company conducts its own research, development and limited manufacturing at its semiconductor fabrication facility in Salem, New Hampshire. In addition, AmberWave Systems collaborates with other technology focused companies to further expand and develop its research. AmberWave System’s most recent innovation is in the area of hetero-integration of compound semiconductors on silicon. AmberWave has an extensive patent portfolio on the three most important technologies for combining the power, speed and optical properties of III-V semiconductors with the economics of silicon device production. Graded buffers, layer transfer and selective epitaxy are all possible candidates for developing hybrid devices. Of these three, AmberWave Systems has recently made significant advances in applying a selective epitaxy process called Aspect Ratio Trapping (ART). With ART, a small, useful region of compound semiconductor can be selectively deposited on a silicon substrate in a way that yields high-quality, low-defect density materials that can be used for a wide range of applications. Possible uses for ART include: * Replacing the silicon channel in CMOS FETs for higher density and higher speed transistors for advanced CMOS processes; * Integrating photo emitters and detectors into silicon for integrated chip-to-chip optics, or direct integration of modulator/demodulator circuitry in CMOS; * Creation of high-efficiency, low-cost solar cells; and * Creation of high-efficiency, low-cost compound semiconductor devices, such as high power/high frequency amplifiers.