Slovenian PhD star wins EU prize for smarter chip production
Slovenian researcher Teja Potočnik, the founder and CEO of UK-based startup Nanomation, is one of ten innovators selected from 450 candidates to receive the European Patent Office's (EPO) Young Inventors Prize this June.
At Nanomation, the startup she founded during her PhD studies at Cambridge, Potočnik and her colleagues have developed an automated software platform that improves precision in manufacturing nanomaterial-based semiconductor chips in a cost-effective way, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.
Improving performance is harder as chips shrink. Nanomaterials like graphene offer potential, but large-scale integration remains difficult, the Munich-based EPO said.
"New materials, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, and quantum dots, are very difficult to incorporate into large-scale semiconductor production," Potočnik has told Forbes Slovenia in an interview.
Her LithoTag solution addresses this challenge.
"Our solution addresses this problem by embedding unique markers onto semiconductor chips, thereby enabling the efficient integration of new materials," she explained. This automation software combines nanometre positioning and computation, paving the way for faster, more energy-efficient devices, the EPO notes.
The invention aims to bridge the gap between research and industrial application.
"Even during my undergraduate studies, I saw a big gap between university research and industrial application ... I founded Nanomation to bridge this gap," Potočnik said.
This approach could enable advanced semiconductor technologies for faster, smaller, more energy-efficient products like advanced sensors or quantum devices.
More efficient chip manufacturing solutions like this could cut data centre energy use by around 10%. Citing World Economic Forum data, the EPO notes global data centres consume 460 TWh annually, the equivalent of the electricity use of 153 million households. Rising computing demand could push data centre energy use to over 3% of global CO2 emissions this year.
Nanomation is now actively seeking partnerships with semiconductor manufacturers.
"Reliability, repeatability, and manufacturing integration are crucial in industry," Potočnik stated, quoted by the EPO. "Even great technology has less value if it can't be scaled. We focus equally on performance, reliability, and manufacturability."
The Young Inventors Prize honours innovators under 30 tackling global challenges with technology. An independent jury selected the finalists from 450 candidates. Potočnik will receive the award at a ceremony in Iceland in mid-June.
Potočnik studied Materials Science and Engineering at Manchester after attending secondary school in Maribor. Graduating in 2020, she pursued a PhD in nanofabrication at Cambridge.
