Australian semiconductor company Archer Materials (ASX: AXE) has progressed its latest Biochip design to the next phase of development by dispatching it to the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd (VTT) for manufacturing.

The Biochip’s newest graphene field-effect transistor (gFET) design, which was announced in July 2024, marks a milestone in enhancing it’s functionality, aiming to make it more versatile and easier to integrate into a range of devices and applications for real-world use.

The new gFET design, which will be fabricated on 200mm diameter wafers, is set to be integrated with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology – a standard and widely used technology in semiconductor manufacturing. This integration will occur via a Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) run, allowing Archer to test how effectively its gFET sensors can be electrically accessed, controlled, and read out by conventional silicon CMOS circuitry.

Advantages of CMOS Integration

The integration of CMOS technology into Archer’s Biochip gFET offers innovative advantages, positioning the Biochip as a cutting edge-edge solution in medical diagnostics. CMOS technology, known for its reliability and efficiency, is crucial in minimising environmental interference, thereby enabling faster and more accurate readings from the sensors. This level of precision is particularly important in medical diagnostics, where reliable and swift results are paramount with the Biochip developed as a lab-on-a-chip capable of diagnosing hundreds of diseases from a single human sample. 

CMOS integration enables the Biochip’s sensors to handle and process large volumes of data simultaneously. This capability is essential for delivering consistent and trustworthy results, even if some sensors within the array encounter faults. Archer’s Biochip is designed with 1,024 gFET sensors on a single array, ensuring that the overall performance remains robust despite potential minor errors. This design minimises the risk of inaccuracies, bolstering the Biochip’s reliability in practical applications.

Additionally, since CMOS is a well-established technology, its integration into Archer’s gFET and biosensors facilitates easier incorporation into existing electronic devices. This compatibility significantly enhances the Biochip’s versatility, making it more practical for deployment in a wide range of real-world settings.

Manufacturing and Technological Advances

VTT will now review Archer’s gFET design to ensure it meets the stringent requirements for integrating the gFET with CMOS readout into a single chip. Upon validation, VTT will fabricate and deliver 40 biosensor array chips to Archer, each containing 1,024 sensors. This stage in the development process represents a critical step in transitioning the Biochip from a prototype to a market-ready product.

The gFETs are designed to address the technological challenges that have historically plagued graphene devices, such as maintaining device stability from chip to chip. The new design features advanced gating structures and materials specifically engineered for liquid multiplexing, a feature that allows for the simultaneous detection of multiple analytes on a single chip. This multi-analyte detection capability is significantly enhanced by the CMOS circuits, which provide the necessary circuitry to multiplex the control and readout of the many gFET sensors.

This latest development with VTT builds on a series of earlier milestones in Archer’s gFET design and fabrication. These include an MPW run with a German foundry, as well as four-inch and six-inch wafer runs at foundries in the Netherlands and Spain, respectively. Archer has also recently achieved a significant size reduction in its Biochip gFET chip design, with these miniaturised chips currently undergoing fabrication.

Greg English, Executive Chair of Archer, highlighted the importance of CMOS compatibility.

“CMOS is an industry-standard technology used in nearly all modern electronic devices. By making our gFETs, and ultimately the biosensor, compatible with CMOS, we’re ensuring they can easily work with other electronic systems,” he said. 

“This compatibility is crucial because it makes the biosensors more versatile and easier to integrate into different devices and applications for real-world use.”

Archer expects to receive the gFET sensor chips from VTT in the first half of 2025, marking a significant step forward in the commercialisation of Archer’s Biochip technology.

For the Full Year ended 30 June 2024, Archer reported net operating cash outflow of $4.9 million which was primarily applied toward R&D of their Biochip and 12CQ quantum chip. The Company remains well capitalised with $18.2m of cash on hand.