It's an early stage Silicon Valley venture capital fund, to adapt Photronics’ novel glass structuring platform technology for use in thermal energy capture and processing applications. The initiative includes an investment from Silicon Values BG Partners.

“We are pleased with the support being provided by BG Partners to further the development of our glass patterning platform within adjacent, high-value application spaces,” said Dr. Christopher Progler, CTO of Photronics. “While we remain intensely focused on our core businesses, successful demonstration here would be a significant step forward in addressing industry needs for large-area, low-cost thermal processing solutions.”

The BG Partners initiative supports technology design refinements and a working prototype demonstration along with assessment of commercial viability and product scale-up potential. Investigations will be performed by Photronics’ technical personnel in Allen, Texas, in collaboration with university and supplier partners.

Dr. Victor V. Boksha, Managing Director of BG Partners stated, “We are very interested in ways that the Photronics glass platform might be deployed for new, high-impact applications. While the announced investment is a key short-term focus for us, it also highlights our longer term strategy of investing in relationships and technologies that can evolve into a broad spectrum product incubation platform.”

Photronics is a manufacturer of photomasks. Photomasks are high precision quartz plates that contain microscopic images of electronic circuits.