|
It's Here - Alien Technology
By Pam Losefsky
Jeff Jacobsen (BBA 76) is an Alien. From his holodeck near Deep Space Nine, he directs the operation of an enterprise bent on bringing to earth a technology so advanced that it will fundamentally change the way we live and conduct business.
But don’t worry…he comes in peace.
Yes, Alien Technology (Corp.) is real—but it has a terrestrial origin in Morgan Hill, California. And while CEO Jacobsen capitalizes on the outer space metaphor—co-opting terms from sci-fi movies and TV shows to name the company’s products, processes, and facilities—the company is solidly grounded in good-old earthly science.
Alien has perfected a process, called Fluidic Self-Assembly (FSA™), in which tiny semiconductor devices, are self assembled in rolls of flexible plastic. The resulting ‘smart’ substrate can go just about anywhere—from the surface of a military vehicle to a flexible display in the corner of your credit card, and because of the incredibly efficient way it’s manufactured (see diagram), it’s really cheap. “Alien has what is called ‘disruptive technology,’” says Tom Baruch, managing partner of CMEA Ventures and an early investor in Alien. “That is, it has the potential to both reduce the cost and improve the performance of information systems. The results are totally new applications of information technology that change the way people do things.”
| CHIPS ON A ROLL | |||
Pyramid shaped Nanoblocks™ are created by chopping up a silicon wafer covered with transistors, or circuits. |
 |
||
Suspended in a solution, the Nanoblocks™ are washed across a continuous sheet of plastic covered with corresponding holes. The holes match the size and shape of the blocks, and they self-align. |
|||
A flexible plastic substrate embedded with smart electronics emerges from the process. Left-over blocks can be used to reduce waste. |
Previously called Beckmen Display, the three-year-old company at first focused on trying to produce large glass flat-panel displays using the FSA™ technology developed by a doctoral student and his advisor at the University of California. Facing daunting challenges and quickly running out of funding, the company was near collapse when its board of directors asked Jacobsen to take a look at it. At the time, Jacobsen was senior vice president of business development at Kopin Corporation, a micro display technology company he co-led from start-up to IPO, his third successful venture.
“The fundamental problem our company had back then,” says Gordon Craig, Alien’s director of fluidic self assembly, “was a mismatch between the state of our technology and our business plan.” The company’s technology just wasn’t capable of doing what the business plan directed. “What we needed was a market that could use the small displays we could make, but nobody in the company, including myself, knew what that market was,” Craig admits.
Beam in Jacobsen, a proven entrepreneur with both the marketing savvy and technical know-how to divine the solution. “Jeff very quickly gave the company focus and direction and made it fundable for early rounds,” remembers Charles Phipps of the Sevin-Rosen Venture Fund, one of the earliest to jump on board. Jacobsen quickly saw that the technology would enable displays to be made on plastic, which would satisfy the business and technical requirements so that they could be made at a profit.
The new business plan that Jacobsen created not only drew funding rapidly—$10 million in three months—it drew top talent from all over the world. Jacobsen quickly recruited a small team of highly competent VPs in the fields of substrate materials, roll to roll manufacturing, display technology, and semiconductor IC (integrated circuit) design. They built a facility, redirected the research, and renamed the company Alien Technology to capture its futuristic vision.
The implications for FSA technology are enormous, but Jacobsen is starting very small; Alien is gearing up to mass-produce smart card displays and the world’s lowest cost Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags for logistics and inventory control. “I wanted to do the absolute simplest thing that could be done with FSA™ in high volume where Alien would have a distinct advantage,” he says. He was right on target. Already, Gemplus, which produces about 40 percent of the world’s smart cards for credit, debit, transportation, customer loyalty, and other such applications, has entered into a $42 million dollar manufacturing agreement and expects that between five and ten percent of its cards will have Alien screens by 2003.
“Every tech start-up company talks about finding a ‘killer application’, but few ever do,” says Jacobsen. “For Alien it has to be the low-cost manufacture of RFID tags in ‘Carl Sagen quantities’.” RFID tags are an enhancement and in many cases will be a replacement for bar codes, which are generally printed on the exterior of product packaging. In addition to the fact that the Uniform Commercial Council (UCC), the issuer of bar code numbers, is running out of numbers, the bar code system is fraught with complications. Bar codes are notoriously difficult to read (ever stand in line at the grocery store while the clerk futilely swipes and re-swipes a product?) and they don’t provide any useful information to track inventory or distinguish product uniqueness.
RFID tag technology will change all that.
“Alien has breakthough technology for working with very tiny microchips,” confirms Kevin Ashton, executive director of the MIT Auto ID Center, a consortium of the largest retailers and manufacturers in the world. “The smaller the chip, the cheaper it is, and this is incredibly important if you want to put chips on everything.” In June the consortium adopted preliminary open-standard technology specifications for world -wide RFID tags that include a significant amount of Alien-patented technology. “So far Alien is one of the few companies—in fact, possibly the only company—that thinks it can make tags cheaply enough,” Ashton says.
Besides small flexible displays and RFID tags, Alien is already preparing to launch its next major market application: Radio Frequency (RF) updateable smart shelf labels. Worldwide, retailers replace and update some 100 billion retail shelf pricing labels weekly. Large retailers spend $2 billion to $4.5 billion dollars per year just to change the product pricing on their store shelves. Smart shelf labels will be able to display price changes instantaneously with the click of a button at a central location, reducing overhead, and eliminating countless hours of manual labor.
It’s easy to get caught up in the Alien spirit when you start imagining what the technology will make possible.
Some day soon by means of radio frequency tagging and smart appliances, our food and its packaging will be tracked efficiently through shipping, distribution, inventory, shelf stocking, and retail checkout. Our refrigerators will suggest a grocery shopping list or tell us which food should be consumed soon or has spoiled. Our ovens and microwaves will be programmed by the RFID ICs on food packaging to optimally prepare the food we have placed inside. RF tags will allow machines to tirelessly plunder our trash for recyclable and hazardous materials, significantly reducing the amount of waste going into the world’s landfills. “One little NanoBlock™ IC one-third the diameter of a human hair can optimize inventory management, quality control, product preparation, and recycling,” avows Jacobsen.
Extremely advanced circuitry will be flowed onto inanimate objects and surfaces everywhere, and these will be able to sense slight fluctuations in any environment, exchange useful information, and make our lives better. Soon, Alien Technology will be pervasive, and most people won’t even realize that it has arrived.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
