31 August 2012

HexaTech raises $500,000 in debt financing

According to a filing on 24 August with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), HexaTech Inc of Morrisville, NC, USA has raised $500,000 in new debt financing involving six investors. A further $54,496 remains still to be raised from the $554,496 offering.

HexaTech was spun off from the Department of Materials Science of North Carolina State University in 2001 with a transfer of technology — developed by the firm’s co-founders Dr Zlatko Sitar (president & chief technology officer) and Dr Raoul Schlesser (VP development) — to produce single-crystalline aluminium nitride (AlN) substrates for both electronic and optoelectronic devices. Subsequently, in late 2005, the firm raised $8.9m in a Series A round of financing led by Intersouth Partners of Durham, NC and joined by H.I.G. Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and NC IDEA.

HexaTech says that its proprietary technology combines the benefits of physical vapor transport (PVT) growth and of seeded growth for the reproducible production of single-crystal AlN boules. Seeded growth enables the fabrication of AlN boules of pre-defined crystallographic orientation. AlN wafers fabricated from the crystals are of well-defined orientation and of high, reproducible crystal quality, the firm says.

HexaTech also subsequently demonstrated a polarity-controlled device layer deposition process that is compatible with industry-standard MOCVD growth equipment. Control over the polarity opens up processing routes that allow the production of efficient deep-UV LEDs by growing aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) layers on AlN substrates (targeting an emission wavelength of 254nm, which is known to interact with DNA in a way that stops water-borne organisms from reproducing).

Consequently, in 2007, HexaTech won a $2m Advanced Technology Program (ATP) grant from the US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) as part of a $3.28m, three-year project (starting in November) to develop high-effiency deep ultraviolet LEDs for use as a high-energy UV light source to kill micro-organisms in drinking and waste water.

Since then, HexaTech raised $300,000 in debt financing in January 2010, followed by a further $3.1m in a round that closed this July (with the aim of adding 10-15 staff to its current workforce of about 25 by the end of this year).  

Including the latest $500,000 in debt financing, HexaTech has now raised more than $17m in total since the firm was founded.

Tags: HexaTech AlN substrates UV-C LEDs

Visit: www.hexatechinc.com

Visit: www.sec.gov