How is it made?

Ion Torrent™ produces semiconductor sequencing chips in standard CMOS factories, leveraging the $1 trillion dollar investment that has been made in the semiconductor industry over the past 40 years. The investment enables semiconductor sequencing to directly benefit from four decades of exponential improvement in semiconductor technology, usually expressed as Moore's Law.

Ion Torrent™ is commercializing the world's first PostLight™ sequencing technology. Instead of using light as an intermediary, Ion Torrent Technology™ creates a direct connection between the chemical and the digital worlds, enabling fast, simple, massively scalable sequencing. To accomplish this, the technology marries simple chemistry to incredibly powerful, proprietary semiconductor technology-it's Watson meets Moore.

Ion Semiconductor Sequencing Chips are designed, manufactured and packaged like any other semiconductor chips. Wafers are cut from a silicon boule. The transistors and circuits are then pattern-transferred and subsequently etched onto the wafers using photolithography. This process is repeated 20 times or more, creating a multi-layer system of circuits that looks something like the subway system under a large city-different layers with many interconnections.

What sets Ion Torrent™ apart from other sequencing methods, is that we don't just borrow ideas from the semiconductor industry-we actually use the entire semiconductor supply chain. Because we can produce our proprietary semiconductor chips in standard CMOS factories, we leverage the $1 trillion dollar investment that has been made in the semiconductor industry over the last 40 years. This industry's huge manufacturing infrastructure enables Ion Torrent™ to meet any demand for its chips.

The Chip is the Machine,™ Ion Torrent™ directly benefits from four decades of exponential improvement in semiconductor technology, also known as Moore's Law. This enables our chips to scale in density for any research application, from small, targeted experiments to large genomes, all on a single platform.

The semiconductor has transformed every industry it has touched, from computing to photography to music. Inevitably, it will transform life sciences as well, a field where speed, simplicity and scalability are critical to enabling new discoveries.

Ion Torrent™ has created a direct connection between chemical and digital information, bringing these two languages together for the first time. This innovation will democratize research, enabling every lab to have a sequencer on its bench. Eventually, Ion Torrent Technology™ will also be able to provide less expensive and more reliable diagnostic tests to improve human health throughout the world.

For Research Use Only. Not intended for any animal or human therapeutic or diagnostic use.