With electronics, the future is all about being smarter, faster, more efficient, and less expensive. This is what POET Technologies Inc. (TSXV: PTK) is set to achieve in developing its next-generation Gallium Arsenide semiconductor device technology called POET, or Planar Opto-Electronic Technology. POET is a platform that allows for the integration of optics and electronics on a single chip and the company claims it can achieve performance improvements have not been possible in the semiconductor world to date. POET Technologies also owns 30 patents and has nine patents pending that protect the intellectual property behind the platform.
POET’s intellectual property can be described as a process, or “recipe” to make semiconductors (chips) that can be built in third-party foundries. These chips would be used in electronic devices, and can boost performance by up to 100 times faster and consume up to 95% less power than existing silicon. As well, the integration into a single chip of functions that take entire chipsets today would result in large component cost reductions as well as an up to 80% reduction in assembly and test costs.
This type of power reduction in commercial-scale server farms, for example, represent tremendous cost savings to companies such as IBM, Google, and Intel.
“If you put POET’s technology in a cellphone you would get the same performance and probably 80% power savings or the same amount of power consumption and an order of magnitude faster in speed relative to silicon,” said POET Technologies’ Executive team.
POET’s platform can also be applied to many applications in the defense sector, as it can produce an infra-red sensor for use in air, sea, ground, and space with sensitivity that is an order of magnitude higher than existing technology. POET arrays can be constructed to be flexible, allowing them to easily be attached to the surface of complex shapes like aircraft and ships, forming an ‘active skin’. This configuration will allow aircraft and ships to service targets much more quickly than the separate sensor-gun-missile systems that represent current state of the art.
The company said it is currently involve in a number of discussions with various industry partners to fabricate semiconductor devices, which would involve the monetization of its intellectual property.
There are many ways in which the company could monetize this technology platform, including selling POET to a single, large third-party buyer, which would likely syndicate its technology access/investment; or selling POET to a syndicate in which its members would ideally have a market presence in all key areas related to POET commercialization. There is also an option to license all or part of the POET technology to one or more third parties for use in a given market.
On January 30, 2014, POET Technologies announced it would be raising proceeds of up to $5 million through a non-brokered private placement financing at a price of 65 cents per unit. With these funds the company will have the necessary capital to sustain its operations “well into 2015.”
“For our shareholders, 2014 will bring industry and investor acceptance that POET is the most disruptive technology that has come along since CMOS silicon,” said POET’s Executive Director Peter Copetti.
The company currently has 132,676,115 issued and outstanding shares as of January 30, 2014, and its stock price has more than doubled since October 17, 2013, to its recent price of 79 cents a share.
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