About Us

Introducing Aligned Carbon~

Aligned Carbon aims to be the leading supplier of aligned and purified Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) for the semiconductor industry. We are the only company that Grows, Aligns, and Purifies CNTs. Our CNT wafers enable monolithic 3D chips. These 3D chips, for instance, provide orders of magnitude gains in efficiency and performance even at relaxed CMOS process nodes (90nm nodes with 3D integration benchmark at 75x better than 7nm nodes for silicon CMOS only for energy-delay product) [1]. Our wafers also provide disruptive material for RF and optical data communication, integrated MEMS systems, and a range of other application verticals.

Our innovation lives in the aligned purification of CNT by selective heating which removes metallic CNT and leaves semiconducting CNTs. Aligned Carbon has been awarded two US patents on its purification process (10633253 and 11208328) and has filed patent applications for worldwide protection.

Aligned Carbon was founded in April 2018. The company has been generously supported by NSF SBIR grants, Activate Fellowships, Department of Energy Advanced Manufacturing Office awards, and equity investment from leading early venture capital firms: Sand Hill Angels, Prefix Capital, Hemisphere Ventures, and numerous early-stage family offices.

Our Team

John (J) Provine, PhD

Founder

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Aligned Carbon was co-founded by CEO, John (J) Provine, PhD. Dr. Provine has over 20 years of experience in nanofabrication beginning with his PhD studies at Cornell University and continuing through the decade-plus he spent as a senior research scientist at Stanford University. Dr. Provine has consulted widely with established companies (eg, Veeco, Bosch) and early stage start-ups (eg, Quantumscape, Spark Thermionics).

Dr. Yonas Yemane

Chief Scientific Officer

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"Dr. Yonas Yemane is the Chief Scientific Officer at Aligned Carbon. Dr. Yemane has expertise in nanofabrication and thin film deposition techniques, particularly in atomic layer deposition (ALD). His graduate research focused on the development and use of the world’s first combined in situ scanning probe microscopy and ALD tool. Dr. Yemane received his PhD in Applied Physics and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and his BA from Harvard University."

Prof. Roger Howe of Stanford University is a member of Aligned Carbon’s technical advisory board and is a long-time mentor and collaborator with Prof. Provine. Finally, Daniel Armbrust has served as a strategic advisor to Aligned Carbon since early 2020, and as an independent member of Aligned Carbon’s Board of Directors since mid-2021. Mr. Armbrust is the former CEO of SEMITECH and the co-founder of Silicon Catalyst.

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How it began..

After founding Aligned Carbon, our team began developing a new approach to carbon nanotube (CNT) production, using a scalable manufacturing process that could produce high-quality CNTs with consistent performance characteristics. We recognized the potential of CNTs to revolutionize many industries, but we also knew that existing CNT production methods were not efficient enough to make this a reality.