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Executives at Peabody-based semiconductor manufacturing technology developer innoPad Inc. report the company is nearing commercialization of its chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) polishing pads, and investors have added $3 million to the company’s coffers to help see it through the effort.
The funding is the company’s second venture capital round after it landed an undisclosed amount of Series A money in 2006. Investors include Velocity Equity Partners of Boston, Stata Venture Partners of Dover, and Toronto Dominion Capital USA of Texas.
Innopad makes polishing pads used in the CMP process of semiconductor manufacturing. The pads, which are used to polish the alternating layers of semiconductor material and insulators, are necessary pieces of almost any chip manufacturing process and are replaced frequently. Yet most manufacturers use pads from a single source — Rohm and Haas Co. of Philadelphia, which has a materials group in Woburn and an electronics operation in Marlborough — according to innoPad president and CEO John Aldeborgh.
“If one of the (Rohm and Haas) facilities burned to the ground or there was a break in the supply chain, they wouldn’t be able to supply their customers, which has become a strategic issue for customers,” said Aldeborgh, a former vice president at Gloucester-based equipment maker Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc.
But innoPad’s push toward commercialization targets more than just sourcing issues in the industry. The company’s technology was originally developed by German materials conglomerate Freudenberg & Co. KG and acquired by Peabody-based Innovent Technologies LLC, which then spun out the company. The technology makes the development of customized pads faster and cheaper, officials claim, which enables it to compete at a time when more complicated semiconductor manufacturing processes put more demands on the CMP process.
InnoPad isn’t the only startup going up against Rohm and Haas. Last month, Oregon-based NexPlanar Corp. landed $14.5 million in funding to pursue its own CMP pad design.
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