The Next Best Thing To a Crystal Ball?

That's what Simpex Technologies states in the welcoming of its home page, beneath an image of a electronic chip being tapped by a laser. Although the small Orange County company has other technologies, as well as consulting services, it's obvious that the company places much of its expectations for growth on one area: a first of its kind nano-detection technology which tests semiconductor connectivity using light. Simpex is hoping it will revolutionize microelectronic testing as well as secure its own fortunes.

Test, But Don't Touch

When I ask Simpex's founder Bernie Siu to explain his valued technology in layman's terms, he refers to a Coke can atop a desk. To the naked eye, he says, there's no way for me to know whether the tin soda container and the wood are bonded, unless I try to grab for it, which in this hypothetical example, I can't do. An X-ray wouldn't be able to detect this either, his point being that there really isn't any noninvasive way of determining connectivity.

Except for Simpex's, and it can do it within an area far smaller than the bottom of that Coke can.

Four years of research and development, and much trial and error, have finally resulted in Simpex's star product: the only noninvasive micro detection technology that can gauge connectivity within nano-scale areas of semiconductors. Simpex, through its engineering consulting work (the original basis of the company's efforts) with semiconductor and microelectronics companies, witnessed first-hand the industry's mad rush to keep up with consumer demand for smaller and lighter products that also must adapt to increasingly harsh environments as they become mobile. What Simpex also witnessed in this evolution was a far from perfect approach to testing these products as they shrunk in size.

"When it gets smaller to the point of the size of a human hair, it gets more and more difficult to assess how well your manufacturing process is," explains Siu. "The way to test it in the current method is to tug, and pull and see if it's attached, or you're shearing off and seeing what the resistance is on those connections. With shearing, you go down to the level where the connection is and apply a very well-controlled force to push against it based on how much force it takes until it separates. Then you know how well it's bonded. It's a resistance test mechanically. As the material gets smaller, you can't quite do that mechanically because the shearing ram has to be just as small, and you don't have any space."

Another major weakness in the current testing methods is that most of them, because of cost-effectiveness issues, are based upon statistics. For instance, if five products test as good, it's assumed that the other 50 or a hundred products like it are good as well. This assumed reliability, as Siu said, comes back to haunt, either in the returning of products or even more serious ramifications, for example, within the medical device industry, which can result in the death of a patient, resulting in severe legal and financial ramifications.

These weak spots inspired the idea for revising testing methods entirely. Siu says the interest to develop the technology was present around five years ago, although real research and development efforts have really only been taking place at Simpex for three years. The goal was to not only create a more accurate and noninvasive method, but to make it more efficient and cost effective.

"We wanted to test how well those connections are bonded together without pulling it or shearing it or even touching it," he explained. "We could also do that in a small area, smaller than a human hair, because we're using light to do it." Siu credits the origins of the technology to the need for determining the bonding integrity of materials, "whether it's a wire or thin coating or whatever it may be for the semiconductor business because (the targets) are getting smaller and smaller." Thus, he adds, "it becomes a high speed, non-contact, quality control sensor for a tremendous amount of applications", allowing them to test 100 percent of the parts without increasing cost, or, indeed, "without destroying or changing the form or shape or function of the product."

If You Build...

The cliché of 'build it and will they will come' applies even to the most credible and relevant products, and Simpex is not immune to the challenge of having to convince the industry that its approach is necessary. Aside from its success in obtaining federal money for R&D (including the winning of the larta-facilitated CalTIP grant in 1998), Simpex has managed to garner credibility and presence via its alliances with national laboratories and research facilities, such as Applied Physics Laboratory (Johns Hopkins University), Army Research Laboratories, The Department of Defense, and National Institute of Standards and Technology, who have aided the small company--with less than twenty employees--in their efforts to pursue a technology that, because of its unprecedented nature, was largely created out of thin air. This has helped it move along with R&D, yet Simpex is still in the process of trying to penetrate the market.

"The trick is to have the industry accept this as a new method. …I can't say, 'trust me, take my word for it.'. And we do not want to underestimate the companies that make the current bond machines. They spent the last few years saying, 'this is the best way to go' and we're going to have to overcome that. Somebody's going to have to say, 'I use it and it works for me,' and most of the industry will follow. So we're right in the threshold of that stage of breaking into the industry."

by Wendy Hall
larta Staff Writer

Simpex Technologies presented at last June's Venture Salon in Orange County, and is currently interacting with the investment community. For more information on Simpex's technologies, click here, or to contact Bernie Siu, click here to send an email.