NVE Profile
NVE Corporation (NVE) develops and sells devices that use spintronics, a nanotechnology that relies on electron spin rather than electron charge to acquire, store, and transmit information. The company manufactures high-performance spintronic products, including sensors and couplers that are used to acquire and transmit data.
The company has focused on three applications for its spintronic technology: magnetic sensors, couplers, and memories. Sensors acquire information, couplers transmit information, and memories store information. In that sense, the company’s technology can provide the eyes, nerves, and brains of electronic systems.
The company’s spintronic sensors are smaller, more precise, and more reliable than competing devices. The company’s couplers transmit more data at higher speeds and over longer distances than conventional devices.
The company’s designs are generally based on either giant magnetoresistance or tunneling magnetoresistance. These structures produce a large change in electrical resistance depending on the electron spin orientation in a free layer.
In giant magnetoresistance (GMR) devices, resistance changes due to conduction electrons scattering at interfaces within the devices. The GMR effect is only significant if the layer thicknesses are less than the mean free path of conduction electrons, which is approximately five nanometers. The company’s critical GMR conductor layers may be less than two nanometers, or five atomic layers, thick.
The second type of spintronic structure the company uses is based on tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR). Such devices are known as Spin-Dependent Tunnel (SDT) junctions or Magnetic Tunnel Junctions (MTJs). SDT junctions use tunnel barriers that are so thin that electrons can ‘tunnel’ through a normally insulating material to cause a resistance change. SDT barrier thicknesses can be in the range of one to four nanometers (less than ten molecular layers).
In the company’s products, the spintronic elements are connected to integrated circuitry and encapsulated (‘packaged’) in much the same way as conventional integrated circuits.
Strategy
The company’s spintronic technology provides eyes, nerves, and brains for electronic systems, breathing life and intelligence into inanimate objects. The company’s unique products support global trends of efficient energy conversion and smart, low-power end nodes for the ‘Internet of Things’. To grow product sales, the company plans to broaden its sensor and coupler product lines and enhance the company’s product benefits in target markets.
The company’s strategy is to compete based on product features rather than to compete solely on price.
Products and Markets
Sensor Products and Markets
The company’s sensor products detect the strength or gradient of magnetic fields and are often used to determine position or speed. GMR or TMR elements change electrical resistance depending on the magnetic field. In many of the company’s devices, sensor elements are combined with foundry integrated circuitry or digital cores, and packaged in much the same way as conventional integrated circuits. The company’s sensors are small, highly sensitive to magnetic fields, precise, and reliable. The company sells standard (‘catalog’) sensors, and custom sensors designed to meet customers’ exact requirements.
Standard Sensors
The company’s standard, or catalog sensors are generally used to detect the presence of a magnetic or metallic material to determine position, rotation, or speed. The company’s spintronic sensors are smaller, more precise, more reliable, and lower power than competing devices. The company’s major market for standard sensors is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for factory automation.
Custom and Medical Sensors
The company’s primary custom products are sensors for medical devices, which are customized to the company’s customers’ requirements and manufactured under stringent medical device quality standards. Many are used to replace electromechanical magnetic switches. The company’s sensors have important advantages in medical devices compared to electromechanical switches, including no moving parts for inherent reliability, and being smaller, more sensitive, and more precise. The company’s sensors can be customized for size, range and sensitivity to magnetic fields, electrical resistance, and embedded software.
Coupler Products and Markets
The company’s spintronic couplers combine a GMR sensor element and an integrated microscopic coil. The coil creates a small magnetic field that is detected by the spintronic sensor, transmitting data almost instantly. Couplers are also known as ‘isolators’ because they electrically isolate the coupled systems. The company’s major coupler markets are power conversion and the IIoT. The company’s couplers enable more efficient power conversion and interconnections to implement the IIoT for advanced factory automation.
DC-to-DC Convertor Products and Markets
The company’s isolated DC-to-DC convertors transfer energy between systems without direct electrical connections. These components are used in power conversion systems and industrial networks for the IIoT. The company also makes products that combine couplers and DC-to-DC convertors to transmit power as well as data.
MRAM Products and Markets
MRAM uses spintronics to store data. Unlike electrical charge, the spin of an electron is inherently permanent. The company has invented several types of memory cells, including inventions related to advanced MRAM designs and MRAM for tamper prevention or detection. The company’s MRAM strategy has been focused on low bit density for applications, such as tamper prevention and detection.
Product Manufacturing
The company’s product manufacturing includes ‘front-end’ wafer production and ‘back-end’ product testing. Wafer production is a cleanroom area with specialized equipment to deposit, pattern, etch, and process spintronic materials. Most of the company’s products are fabricated in its facility using either raw silicon wafers or foundry wafers. Foundry wafers contain conventional electronics that perform housekeeping functions, such as voltage regulation and signal conditioning in the company’s products.
Each wafer may include thousands of devices. The company builds spintronics structures on wafers in the company’s fabrication facility. The company either saw wafers to be sold in die form, or send wafers to Asia for dicing and packaging. Other production operations include wafer-level inspection and testing. Packaged parts are returned to the company to be tested, inventoried, and shipped.
The company’s facility has been certified under the ISO 9001:2015 quality management standard and is an Approved Place of Manufacture under ECS/CIG 021-024: 2014.
Sales and Product Distribution
The company relies on distributors who stock and resell the company’s products in more than 75 countries. Distributors of the company’s products include America II Electronics, Inc., Angst+Pfister Sensors and Power, Avnet companies, and Digi-Key Corporation. The company’s distributor agreements generally renew annually. In addition, the company distributes versions of some of its products under private-brand partnerships with large integrated device manufacturers. These private-brand partnerships broaden the company’s distribution and enhance its sales support, technical support, and product awareness.
New Product Status
In 2022, the company began marketing a number of new and improved products, including additional ultraminiature isolated DC-to-DC convertor models; an ultraminiature TMR magnetic sensor; an ultrahigh-sensitivity TMR magnetic sensor; and more products combining data couplers with isolated DC-to-DC convertors to transmit power, as well as data.
Long-term product development programs in fiscal 2023 focused on even higher sensitivity TMR sensors and Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) for antitamper applications.
Intellectual Property
Patents
As of March 31, 2023, the company had more than 50 issued U.S. patents assigned to the company. The company also has a number of foreign patents, a number of the U.S. and foreign patents pending, and the company has licensed patents from others.
The company has patents on advanced MRAM designs that are important, including patents that relate to magnetothermal MRAM, spin-momentum MRAM, and synthetic antiferromagnetic storage.
Trademarks
‘NVE’ and ‘IsoLoop’ are the company’s registered trademarks. Other trademarks the company claims include ‘GMR Switch’ and ‘GT Sensor’.
Dependence on Major Customers
The company relies on several large customers for a significant percentage of the company’s revenue, including Abbott Laboratories, Sonova AG, certain other medical device manufacturers, and certain distributors.
History
NVE Corporation, a Minnesota corporation, was founded in 1989.
