

CMP pad producer, NexPlanar has received US$3.5 million in venture debt financing from ATEL Ventures to support a production capacity expansion due to increased customer demand. NexPlanar is venture-backed by BlueRun Ventures, InterWest Partners, SmartForest Ventures, Fina Ventures, Intel Capital and Entegris.
“The semiconductor industry responded favorably to our Q3 2009 launch of the NexPlanar Element family, and we’ve already opened a representative office in Taipei respond to new demand from Taiwan and South East Asia,” said Jim LaCasse, President and CEO, NexPlanar. “This debt investment from ATEL will help us scale appropriately to meet the demands of our global customer base, while continuing to advance our technology.”
NexPlanar uses proprietary nano-domain’ technology which is claimed to improve planarity and across wafer uniformity allowing for low stress CMP with fewer defects, low slurry consumption processing and lower overall cost of ownership.