Interviewer / Host (3:24)

Our chat really gets into the why

Maria Varmazis (3:26)

and how of semiconductor fabrication in space and what are the advantages of using low Earth orbit for this highly specialized manufacturing process and how can it scale? Here's our conversation.

Alistair McGibbon (3:41)

Okay, so I'm Alastair McGibben and I'm head of semiconductors at Space Forge. So I'm responsible for anything to do with the manufacturing space of semiconductors and then making the most terrestrially of the semiconductors we produce and getting those semiconductors into global supply chains.

Interviewer / Host (4:01)

Wonderful.

Maria Varmazis (4:02)

Well, thank you so much for joining

Interviewer / Host (4:03)

me today and congratulations to you and everyone at Space Forge. The whole reason that, that we're chatting today is that you all just marked a huge success with Forgestar1, successfully generating plasma aboard.

Maria Varmazis (4:16)

Can you tell me a bit about

Interviewer / Host (4:18)

what does that mean and why is that so crucial in semiconductor manufacturing?

Alistair McGibbon (4:24)

Well, what that means in terms of

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (4:26)

the materials we make.

Alistair McGibbon (4:27)

So our focus is to make the most of in space conditions to be able to grow semiconductors in. The process that we've chosen is called Plasma Enhanced CVD. So chemical vapor deposition in FABs. Terrestrially people use that process, but it's a complicated semiconductor process. And what we're trying to do is replicate that in satellite in low Earth orbit. So that's the first thing we have

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (4:55)

to do is if we can get

Alistair McGibbon (4:57)

a payload up with the basics of that semiconductor process. So ability to store gas, manage gas around the system, fire up a plasma so that when you put gas into the plasma, the gases will break down and you can start to be able to grow the material you want to grow. So what we've got on orbit is all those elements to be able to do that. So we've proven that, that we can actually get a semiconductor to in low Earth orbit. The next thing is to go for a scale up where we can start to grow material of a scale that we can prove basically that crystals grow better in space.

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (5:41)

So that's where we are.

Interviewer / Host (5:43)

Wonderful. Well, I'm very curious about the genesis of the whole idea here. Given your expertise in semiconductors. I'm curious, I mean, for a long time was it sort of known or maybe dreamt of that space could be an ideal environment for this kind of crystal growth? Or was it just, let's try it and see what happens?

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (6:05)

Yeah, well, there's, there's a lot of

Alistair McGibbon (6:07)

data going back to the 70s that, you know, crystal growth is better in some form when you're trying to grow materials in low Earth orbit. So even back to star WARP in the 70s, there was the Wake Shield project which showed you can start to grow semiconductors and NASA have done a study of over 100 cases where the general truth is that crystals grow better. That could be the homogeneity or the growth rate or the quality of the crystals where you can get 2, 3, 4 orders of magnitude lower defectivity, so better quality.

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (6:45)

So the founders of Space Forge identified that as an opportunity. Obviously that's a long way from actually being able to manufacture semiconductors reliably, which is where I've come in in terms of how do we make the most of our payload tool to really optimize in space conditions so that what we grow is going to be reliably better than anything that can be done on Earth. And that's, that's all the steps we're taking at the moment. But there's based, we're standing on the shoulders of giants in that. There's been a lot of data that shows it's better. But we're now focusing on, well, how do you actually make money out of that?

Interviewer / Host (7:26)

Yeah, that's always an important question, especially in the commercial field. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. When I was reading the press release, a phrase that really stood out to me was that this plasma was called a space grown seed. Very evocative phrase there. And I'm curious, getting that back to Earth obviously is a challenge in and of itself. Are there concerns about, is there fragility with what has been grown in space? Are there concerns there?

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (7:52)

Yeah.

Interviewer / Host (7:52)

Can you tell me a bit about sort of what happens after the plasma is generated?

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (7:55)

Yeah, so, so the CVD process, chemical vapor deposition, what, what you do is you grow basically circular wafers. And then if you keep growing on top of that, you effectively grow an ingot which is circular of a, of a crystal. So most semiconductor crystals are growing that way, or from the case of silicon, it's a seed in a melt. But when we talk about a seed here, we're talking about a seed wafer. So initially for the material was just literally a 1 or 2 inch diameter material which would eventually want to make bigger as we get, you know, get at that. So what you do on orbit is then grow a seed wafer on a substrate. And that substrate is on quite a rigid block actually. So we've done plenty of sort of experiments and analysis to show that that's not a problem, you know, that to bring all that back, it can survive. And in fact, we're also doing missions with some other partners where we're just proving that we're getting more data to prove that that's okay. So when we talk about a seed wafer, we can literally be talking about material that's only a few hundred microns thick. The importance is the quality of that material, because when you grow in a seed in semiconductors, generally the quality of the ingot is only as good as the seed you start with.

Alistair McGibbon (9:15)

Right?

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (9:15)

And that's the main premise. So you basically almost do in space

Alistair McGibbon (9:21)

what space can only do.

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (9:22)

You focus in on the value added piece, really high quality crystal material of crystals that are harder to grow.

Alistair McGibbon (9:29)

And then when you bring them back,

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (9:30)

you can use terrestrial processes to grow on these crystals and scale them up. And that way you're starting to see how you can get a business case from that, because you're just focusing. You know, obviously space is still very expensive, even though the cost of launch is going down and, you know, you basically split it. So you're doing the high value added piece in space and then scaling up terrestrially. And that means we also have to be effectively a very good semiconductor company where we're doing growth on Earth on our space seats. And we're doing that as well. We're developing our space capability, but also developing our terrestrial growth capability for the market.

Maria Varmazis (10:19)

We'll be right back.

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Interviewer / Host (11:26)

Okay, so I think that's a great segue into a question I'm sure you hear a lot about. What kinds of semiconductors? What are the applications that are especially prime for this kind of manufacturing process? Are there certain types or is it rather globally ideal?

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (11:43)

No, it's definitely certain types. Initially so what we're not doing is silicon. So silicon is a highly mature, multi trillion dollar industry where very high quality materials. Our focus is on the sort of non silicon materials which are can be much harder to grow. And there are markets where these materials are starting to penetrate into global markets. But the problem is they're very limited by the quality of the material and how far they can go. So the types of materials we're focusing on are called wide and ultra wide band gap semiconductors. So that can be silicon carbide, gallium nitride, diamond, or next generation materials like aluminum nitride. And these materials, they're limited. What you use them for is for low high voltage applications or energy applications where these materials can take a much higher voltage across them than silicon can. So for example, silicon carbide is used in Tesla's in the power management system because you can get you know, 12, 1500 volts across a silicon carbide device, whereas silicon's only about one or 200. But the problem is the quality of the material has lots of defects in it. So the yield is very low. And you can theoretically go to much, much higher voltages than just 1,000 or 2,000. You can go to 10,000 or 20,000. But you're limited by the quality of the material. It will just break down if it's not a perfect crystal. And then the other, the other aspect is, you know, diamond is an important material for that sort of thing. But also, you know, quantum computing and sensing that requires very, very high quality crystals and the ability to control the doents within that. So the, what they have is some vacancy centers of elements that aren't the base material which you can then control to turn into quantum computers. So by using space manufacturing for that, you can get very high quality crystal, but also very, very good control of the to materials that you have within that crystal. So you're opening up markets in, you know, high voltage technologies like power electronics or RF for transport and energy. But then you're also opening up the quantum markets as well, potentially within space manufacturing.

Interviewer / Host (14:24)

And I could see further down the line that there are in space applications for all those technologies that you mentioned. And it would be fascinating to see if semiconductors manufactured in space end up being back in space.

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (14:38)

Yes, so, so our process itself. So because it's a PL plasma deposition, so a plasma can do two things. It can help to grow material, but can also etch it away. So what you've got there then is two basic semiconductor processes. If for example, you had some way of doing some sort of direct write process. Then you've got the start of the ability to perhaps make photovoltaic cells in low Earth orbit or on the lunar surface for space use. It's very, very different from semiconductor manufacturing. The devices and materials that you're likely to make in space in the future are very unlikely to replicate what you do on Earth. It's going to be something different.

Interviewer / Host (15:31)

That's got to be a fascinating challenge to.

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (15:33)

And that's a lot of people already starting to think about that. And so how do you actually make some viable semiconductor device in space? What you certainly can do is sort of fabs in space where you're almost replicating what is done terrestrially. It's got to be something different and much more value added.

Interviewer / Host (15:52)

That's a fascinating idea. My father used to work in a fab. I remember hearing many of his stories of days in the fab and just

Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (16:01)

imagining that very complex. So the most complex manufacturing process created by man is some of the advanced semiconductors. So they're very complex, but there's perhaps simple versions or high value added versions. You can start as an initial point of developing in space manufacturing, where you go beyond that, take it step by step. But the important thing is to focus on the things where there's a real advantage. First develop that and then see where that technology starts to take you foreign.

Maria Varmazis (16:45)

And that's T minus deep space. Brought to you by N2K CyberWire.

Interviewer / Host (16:49)

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Maria Varmazis (16:51)

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Interviewer / Host (16:59)

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Maria Varmazis (17:01)

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Alistair McGibbon (continued, technical explanation) (18:19)

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