SmartKem Announces New TFT Fabrication Facility for Flexible Semiconductors

SmartKem announced the opening of a new thin-film-transistor (TFT) fabrication and testing facility at the company’s Manchester site, doubling the size of the company.

The expansion is set to provide comprehensive support to product development agreements, allowing partners to rapidly develop market-driven, flexible TFT-based products for applications in the display, touch screen and sensor industries.

Together with the company’s organic synthesis technology and material formulation laboratories the center will offer complete turnkey support for its tru-FLEX technology platform in the development of flexible electronics applications.

The new facility offers TFT device modeling, device stack design and a TFT fabrication suite including coating and evaporation equipment as well as a comprehensive test suite for device and circuit characterization including a semi-automated probe station.

The expansion and significant capital investment follows the recent Series A funding from a syndicate of leading investors including Finance Wales, BASF Venture Capital, Entrepreneurs Fund and Octopus Investments. Together with the creation of this new device facility expansion, SmartKem will also be increasing the size of its team by 30% with new members joining the synthesis, formulations and device technology groups.

“We are seeing positive traction in the market for flexible electronics across the board from our core market of flexible AMOLED and EPD backplane drivers as well as many new and exciting applications,” said Steve Kelly, chief executive of SmartKem. “With the combined market for flexible display and electronics set to top $50 billion in the next five years, we are in great shape to continue to supply SmartKem tru-FLEX into new products and satisfy the growing market demand.”