Technologies
Acorn's interests include a broad range of technology opportunities. The technologies currently in our portfolio include semiconductor innovations, a variety of communication and software technologies, and some inventions in the pharmacology area.
Acorn fills the gap between the invention of an idea and its commercialization. Acorn is interested in ideas that have a strong commercial value. A good idea can be a significant improvement on an old product concept, or may be cutting edge. We are particularly interested in ideas that enhance products in existing markets, where licensing to an entire industry may yield significant returns. Patentability is an important concern, though sometimes the time-to-market advantage of a technology may be a sufficient basis for Acorn to acquire the technology.
Two examples illustrate our interests:
- Advanced Communication Technologies
- We have invented an advanced filter specific to CDMA and its derivatives that provides a substantial improvement in performance. That can translate to additional capacity for cellular networks or improved data throughput. The technology is being adapted to other communication protocols.
- Advanced transistor technology
- Acorn has developed a new form of tunneling transistor, one that will attack some of the serious problems facing the semiconductor and integrated circuit industry such as device yield as it scales devices to smaller feature sizes. This technology uses quantum physics ideas to achieve devices with feature sizes less than 90 nM, which will be difficult to achieve with today's transistor technology. Acorn is targeting the 45 nanometer node for introduction of this device.
View more information and links to our published papers.