ChEmpower raises $18.7 million for microchip polishing tech

The electronic chemical start-up ChEmpower has raised $18.7 million in a series A funding round to advance its abrasive-free system for polishing and planarizing silicon wafers during semiconductor manufacturing. The investment was led by the venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, which supplies chemicals to the semiconductor industry, and included participation by Intel and the semiconductor toolmaker Tokyo Electron.

The process of making computer chips involves multiple rounds of depositing, patterning, and etching materials on the silicon substrate. At the end of each round, and sometimes in between, technicians polish the surface to microscopic levels of flatness in a process called chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP). Water-based solutions of cerium oxide and silica powder usually provide the grit—the “mechanical” part of the process’s name.

Mike Corbett, a principal at the electronic chemical consultancy Linx Consulting, says abrasives are both expensive and a source of imperfections. The industry has been focusing on the chemical side of CMP and cutting the grit loading in CMP slurries, which has gone from about 15% 2 decades ago to less than 1% today. ChEmpower’s abrasive-free approach is a continuation of that trend, Corbett says.

ChEmpower isn’t disclosing how it provides planarization without an abrasive. A press release announcing the fundraising calls the pads “chemically reactive.” A quote on its website from a cofounder, Clarkson University professor emeritus S. V. Babu, says “designing the right chemistry for the formulary polish solution together with the chemical moieties built into the polymer backbone of the planarizing pad are key to achieve the material removal rates and superior planarization.”

The firm is targeting production lines that make chips with features smaller than 10 nm, a leading-edge part of the semiconductor market that is the focus of most new chip factories.

Corbett says such facilities may be receptive to new approaches. At the same time, he says, “a lot of processes and chip designs are already qualified” by the electronics firms that semiconductor makers sell to. And CMP technology changes more slowly than other parts of the chipmaking industry. ChEmpower will have to prove not only that its system works but that it’s worth the investment required to switch over.

Corbett says toolmakers, chipmakers, and electronic device makers will want to see lower costs in use, reduced maintenance and downtime of equipment, and lower defect rates in the final chips. In the press release, ChEmpower claims that it brings all three of those benefits and makes water recycling within a chip plant easier.

ChEmpower isn’t the first foray into the $3.5 billion-per-year CMP market for the company’s CEO and cofounder, Sudhanshu Misra. He founded NexPlanar, which made thermoplastic polyurethane CMP pads and matching slurries, in 2003 and sold it to the chemical maker Cabot in 2015 for $142 million. That business is now part of Entegris.