SmartKem has closed a series A funding round from an investment syndicate comprising BASF Venture Capital, Octopus Investments and Entrepreneurs Fund, plus further investment from Finance Wales, the company’s principal shareholder.
The investment will build on the GBP3m of investment from Finance Wales to date and will be used to further develop the scientific foundation of the SmartKem tru-FLEX organic semiconductor material range, and to accelerate this technology towards full commercialisation.
The investment will provide SmartKem with the ability to further develop its tru-FLEX semiconductor technology to the point of market-readiness. It will also contribute to the scale-up and support of current and future partner programmes which are key to the technology’s commercialisation.
SmartKem’s tru-FLEX has been developed to allow display and electronics manufacturers to obtain industry grade thin-film-transistor (TFT) performance with leading physical flexibility, enabling bendable and foldable mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as wearable display based applications.
Steve Kelly, CEO at SmartKem, says: “The market now recognises that SmartKem’s tru-FLEX provides manufacturers with truly flexible TFTs with high physical and electrical stability coupled with best-in-class charge carrier mobility. Our low temperature semiconductor process allows unrivalled design freedom in choice of barrier layers and substrates for highly flexible transistor backplane manufacture. This key ability to process at low temperature offers manufacturers a “cost-down” proposition whilst opening the door to the use of printing processes such as ink-jet or roll-to-roll technology. This has the potential to disrupt production costs for OEMs whilst simplifying the whole manufacturing process.”