Exponential growth in production demand sees Cardea eyeing the millionth biosensor in 2023

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Since its founding in late 2013, Cardea's scientists have been pioneering the development of the world's first mass produced biocompatible semiconductor - the BPU (Biosignal Processing Unit) - also called a graphene Field Effect Transistor (gFET) or graphene biosensor.

Brett Goldsmith, PhD, Chief Technology Officer at Cardea, states, "20 years ago we started seeing signs that carbon-based electronics were going to succeed at integrating biology and electronics where existing semiconductors had failed. However, at that time, no one had the technical understanding or experience necessary to create a scalable system concept. This is what we've done at Cardea in creating our BPU platform of wetware, nanoware, hardware, and software modules. It's because of that scalability that I'm immensely proud to say that this year we reached over half a million sensors produced in total and we believe we have the capacity to reach more than one million in 2023."

While the use of graphene in electronics has been in the experimental phase for years, it's only recently that scalable production has been achieved. An industry deep-dive from McKinsey estimates that graphene will become a $70B market in semiconductors by 2030.

IEEE Medal of Honor recipient and founder of numerous MEMS (Micro-ElectroMechanical System) semiconductor companies, as well as member of Cardea's Innovation Council, Dr. Kurt Petersen, states, "Cardea's visionary team has successfully incorporated the many years of knowhow from silicon semiconductor processing and applied this knowledge to graphene-based semiconductors. That may sound trivial, but it's absolutely not. Not only did they have to overcome the challenges to incorporate new materials and production concepts but think of the very basic idea: They're measuring the electronic signals from biology in liquids and salts on top of a semiconductor, which would almost instantly render any silicon-based chip useless. Cardea is - both in terms of production capacity and quality, as well as IP - the world's leading company in graphene biosensors. They have a significant capacity to revolutionize medical diagnostics sooner than most people think."

Kelly Huang, PhD, Chief Operating Officer at Cardea, adds, "We've made significant improvements in our production processes over the past year. In 2020 and earlier, our average monthly production was around 1,000 chips, increasing to 5,000 in 2021. This year we've demonstrated capacity for 20,000 BPUs each month and have projected to significantly increase our production capacity, next year. Moreover, we are now above a 90% yield for transferring graphene on to printed wafers. Also, when we do finished product testing as a last step in our quality control process, 95% of the electrical properties we measure are within 20% of the mean. That signifies a solid quality in the final product, which means the scientists that are using our BPUs are experiencing great reproducibility and consistency in their day-to-day measurements."

A complete tour of Cardea's production facilities and production process available here.

This Thursday - August 18, 2022 – the Graphene Council will release a prerecorded webinar, featuring Cardea's CTO, Brett Goldsmith, who elaborates on this topic as well as being part of setting the standards for the use of graphene in electronics. The recording will be available via thegraphenecouncil.org

Cardea Bio is the world's only mass producer of a biocompatible semiconductor, the BPU™ (Biosignal Processing Unit) Platform. The BPU is the first and only semiconductor capable of translating real-time streams of multiomics signals into digital information. Through the BPU™ platform, Cardea's long-term vision is to democratize access to the biosignals and insights behind the most advanced technology on our planet: Nature and biology. The Internet of Biology is that way becoming possible.

Cardea's rapidly expanding IP portfolio now has 29 broad patents issued and another 32 patents pending, cementing Cardea's market-leader position in the graphene biosensor industry, where they are bringing the BPU™ (Biosignal Processing Unit) Platform to market.

Cardea is headquartered in San Diego and has additional activity in Los Angeles. Cardea is a 100% American developed and built biocompatible semiconductor graphene biosensor platform for applications across a variety of sectors including human health, agriculture, molecular diagnostics, biotechnology, environmental monitoring, and animal health.

Contact Cardea
Lasse Görlitz, VP of Communications
US phone: +1 858 319 7135
EU phone: +45 2758 2601
[email protected]

SOURCE Cardea Bio