Monday, October 13, 2008

SiOnyx confirms Harvard’s role in licensing ‘black silicon’

By Mass High Tech Staff

SiOnyx Inc., a Beverly-based company making a new kind of semiconductor material called black silicon, has released some details of its licensing deal with Harvard University for the patents behind the technology.

Harvard has taken an unspecified equity position in SiOnyx in exchange for the patent portfolio and will get royalties on commercialized products, SiOnyx officials say.

The company also confirmed the speculation, first reported in Mass High Tech, that black silicon is made using a laser implant technique that alters the photonic properties of semiconductor devices. The laser technique was discovered by Eric Mazur, Harvard’s Balkanski professor of physics and applied physics, who is listed as an investor in SiOnyx. James Carey, who is the company’s chief science officer, was also part of the team that stumbled upon black silicon.

Black silicon absorbs light at a greater rate than traditional silicon, mainly because of its surface, made of tiny spikes just hundreds of nanometers long. Black silicon’s promise is that it turns normally gray silicon to a deep black that absorbs nearly all of the light to which it is exposed — nearly twice the visible light of regular silicon as well as infrared light that is normally invisible to silicon-based devices.

SiOnyx closed an $11 million round of funding in October of 2007 from investors including Harvard, RedShift Ventures of Virginia, Harris & Harris Group of New York and Polaris Venture Partners of Waltham, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.