Looking back, on a certain day in 2000, Dr. Fang Wei, who was working at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, suddenly had a thought - "It's too hot here, I should move to a place with better weather."

At that moment, he coincidentally met Mr. Chen Zhongwei, one of the founders of Hermes-Microvision Inc. (HMI), who was visiting clients. The two hit it off immediately. Thus, Dr. Fang sold his house, packed all his furniture into a container, came to the United States, and devoted himself to HMI, starting an inseparable bond with electron microscopy.

In just over a decade that followed, HMI leveraged its outstanding R&D capabilities to become the world leader in semiconductor electron detection equipment and secured a place in the world-class semiconductor advanced process equipment market. Today, Dr. Fang Wei's team embarks on a new journey by founding Bio-eBeam (Ningbo Borui Sere Electronic Beam Technology Co., Ltd.), focusing on the life sciences field. Based on over twenty years of R&D experience accumulated at HMI and ASML, Bio-eBeam launched its first-generation product - the field emission high-speed scanning transmission (STEM) electron microscope RAVIIS-300, which showcased extraordinary capabilities upon its release.

Recently, Instrument Information Network had the honor of interviewing Dr. Fang Wei to reflect on his journey of growing alongside electron microscopy and to hear about the founding intentions and development vision of Bio-eBeam.

Founder, CEO and CTO of Bio-eBeam: Fang Wei

Fang Wei entered Tsinghua University in 1984 and obtained his PhD in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1994; he taught at Tsinghua from 1995 to 1996; from 1996 to 2001 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher and researcher at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; he joined the innovative company HMI in Silicon Valley in 2001 and served as VP of Engineering until ASML acquired HMI in 2016; currently, he is the founder, CEO and CTO of Bio-eBeam.

Joining HMI: Started by chance, achieved by necessity

Dr. Fang Wei admitted: "At that time I didn't know much about HMI; I just believed very much in Mr. Chen Zhongwei and was attracted by his charisma, so I decided to join. After joining, I found out that there were only a dozen people here and the products had not yet been developed." During his university days, Dr. Fang's major was image recognition and artificial intelligence; after joining HMI, he continued to engage in image processing research. However, the instruments at HMI used electron optical scanning technology, which was different from what he had learned before. Therefore, Dr. Fang Wei relearned electron optics from Mr. Chen Zhongwei.

The HMI team started with electron guns and gradually mastered the entire process of image processing, deeply researching defect detection and imaging mechanisms of electrons in semiconductors. Through relentless efforts, they successfully entered the semiconductor industry and reached the pinnacle of semiconductor electron detection equipment.

However, the road to success was not smooth sailing. Dr. Fang Wei recalled: "In 2007, while our equipment was fiercely competing with KLA, we welcomed a Japanese client. In the intense H2H competition on the user side, sometimes for good data comparison we needed to walk back and forth through a clean room for a distance of 500 meters; that time we were busy from six in the morning until three the next morning, making 19 trips back and forth for a total distance of twenty kilometers."

Fortunately, it was an accidental mistake during this test that allowed them to see defects that were usually invisible. The HMI team quickly responded and immediately returned to the United States for improvements; they completed optimizations in less than a week. As a result, HMI's machines outperformed KLA with better performance, leading the client to decide to purchase their products.

However, when the financial crisis broke out in 2008, this client went bankrupt and could not afford to make purchases. Faced with difficulties, the HMI team made a bold decision: let the client use it for free first and settle accounts once their financial situation improved. This trust and concern for clients established a deep friendship between HMI and them. In 2009, the client made large purchases of HMI's products. It was also from this time that HMI overcame KLA and welcomed true growth.

Dr. Fang Wei summarized: "The reason why HMI was able to succeed mainly benefited from our dual focus on technology and users. During the company's early days, several founders each took charge of key areas such as electron optics, mechanics, automation, software and marketing. We developed independently with an emphasis on excellence; at the same time closely monitored customer needs and responded as quickly as possible."

ASML's acquisition of HMI: Based on a sense of crisis from being too high up

Dr. Fang Wei continued: "By 2013, HMI had successfully gone public. At that time, semiconductor giant Intel faced great difficulties while developing 14nm chips; other manufacturers could not solve these problems either and turned to us for help. I led my team with instruments for three or four months to help them clarify issues and find the root cause of defects."

"This breakthrough allowed Intel to quickly advance mass production. They were very pleased and purchased nine machines from us along with subsequent software and maintenance plans. This large order caused HMI's stock price to soar and allowed its market share to exceed 90% thereafter."

"There is a saying that it is lonely at the top. We felt this was both good news and bad news. With no competitors left for HMI, users began to worry. So we started thinking about how we should proceed next."

"By 2014 we collaborated with ASML on online monitoring for lithography machines; after completing that project we had excellent data results. The current CEO of ASML Christophe Fouquet personally oversaw this matter at that time; he suggested that instead of cooperating it would be better for them to acquire us so both sides could help each other more effectively."

From late 2015 when both parties had initial ideas until around July 2016 after more than half a year of negotiations, ASML reached an acquisition agreement with HMI. Due to differences in corporate culture and development philosophy between the two companies during this period some disagreements and frictions inevitably occurred leading some employees to choose to leave.

About Jushuo Technology: Born under further market expansion after HMI went public

Regarding Jushuo Technology, Dr. Fang Wei stated that after HMI went public discussions began internally about strategies for further market expansion; considering that focusing solely on semiconductors might limit company valuation growth they conceived ideas for expanding into biology fields due to significant differences between biology and semiconductors which led them to specifically seek evaluations from some experts.

Subsequently in 2013 and 2014 HMI conducted some exploratory attempts; although the board held a cautious attitude believing there were considerable risks they received support from Mr. Chen Zhongwei. Based on this three young individuals left HMI in 2015 to establish Jushuo Technology with investments from Mr. Chen Zhongwei and HMMI.

After the establishment of Jushuo Technology, it did not completely separate from HMI; many technical foundations are based on HMI, starting from a high point, and the product launch speed is also very fast.

However, with HMI being acquired by ASML in 2016, the relationship between the two parties changed, and HMI's shares exited from Jushuo Technology. In the following years, Jushuo Technology experienced a period of turmoil, with increased capital consumption, insufficient product stability, and overly ambitious goals with a too broad product line. Due to concerns about technological conflicts, investors had limited involvement in Jushuo Technology, leading to a certain degree of laissez-faire.

It wasn't until 2020 that Mr. Chen Zhongwei began to get involved in Jushuo Technology's affairs after retiring from ASML. He found that the company's development had become somewhat out of control. In 2021, Jushuo Technology made personnel adjustments.

Dr. Fang Wei pointed out that although the biological field was the initial direction HMI hoped Jushuo Technology would develop, it did not fully focus on this during execution, leading to a deviation in direction. Now, the original business of Jushuo Technology has been taken over by Bio-eBeam.

Establishing Bio-eBeam: Starting a New Journey in Life Sciences

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. Dr. Fang Wei and Mr. Chen Zhongwei were very concerned about the domestic situation and learned from a domestic friend that he spent a week working overtime using instruments to search for the virus. This deeply moved both of them.

"We can easily detect defects in semiconductor automatic testing, even if the content is as small as one part per million or ten million; we can quickly find defects. Why can't we find viruses? And why can't they be automatically detected? It requires manual testing for more than ten hours a day, which is very hard." Thus, they decided to make some changes.

To put this idea into practice, Dr. Fang Wei and Mr. Chen Zhongwei quickly took action. As the United States also began implementing isolation measures, they frequently communicated via video calls, and many patents for Bio-eBeam started to be prepared at this time.

During the research and development process, they raised three key questions: first, how to observe and quantify extremely low concentrations of nanoparticles (viruses) in a short time; second, whether manual methods could still be relied upon when faced with large and complex data volumes like those from Harvard's Neuroglancer; third, whether high-throughput and large-area imaging in pathological analysis could improve diagnostic accuracy. Based on these considerations, they decided to reintroduce semiconductor industrial-grade electron beam detection technology into life sciences.

The spread of the pandemic brought many inconveniences to their work. Since Singapore had not yet implemented strict lockdown measures at that time, they registered their company there.

By 2021, Dr. Fang Wei and Mr. Chen Zhongwei returned to China to look for suitable places for development. At this time, a classmate of Dr. Fang Wei recommended Ningbo to them. There are resources here, and Zhejiang is also their hometown; thus they established Ningbo Borui Sili Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.

First-generation core product: High-speed field emission scanning transmission (STEM) electron microscope RAVIIS-300

The first generation product launched by Bio-eBeam -- RAVIIS-300 is the first single-beam field emission scanning transmission electron microscope in China, achieving an imaging speed of 2x100M/5 with both bright field and dark field channels. It features fully automatic sample loading and can perform continuous image acquisition for 24 hours a day over seven days. In terms of resolution, RAVIIS-300 does not pursue extremes but positions itself at 1nm. The 50kV electron gun not only reduces material costs but also minimizes sample loss, ensuring wide application of biological samples.

Its unique immersive electromagnetic compound lens system allows for rapid switching between large and small fields. That is, it allows users to first capture a low-resolution image of a large field before switching to high-resolution images at any point. This technology not only ensures image quality but also greatly improves scanning efficiency. The modified sample platform can track information related to transport, transfer, storage, etc. The patented vibration-free motion platform can reduce noise generated by vibrations thereby improving image resolution; in terms of software, RAVIIS-300 has increased real-time processing capabilities for A, allowing scanning and image processing to occur simultaneously which saves users a lot of time.

Dr. Fang Wei mentioned: "For example, hospital users need to learn medical knowledge as well as electron microscopy and A technology; many grassroots or local hospitals simply do not have this capability. RAVIIS-300 greatly lowers the usage threshold and reduces this pain point. We have already delivered instruments; after about half an hour of introduction by engineers, users can start operating them."

In addition, another product from Bio-eBeam is the high-throughput field emission scanning electron microscope SEMNova-1000, which retains the original product NavigatorSEM-100 from Jushuo Technology. It achieves single beam SE+BES imaging speed of 100M pixels with a resolution of 1.5nm@1kV(1nA) with selectable landing energy from 0~12keV; it also supports fully automatic sample loading and continuous image acquisition for 24 hours a day over seven days.

Dr. Fang Wei finally said: "Now established electron microscope companies have been around for seventy or eighty years with very strong capabilities. Without unique technology or pushing products to perfection, it is easy to be defeated. Therefore, to establish a foothold in the market, we need to look at problems from another angle: can we solve some actual problems for users? If they haven't done it yet, then we will do it."

"Our products will continue to move forward, but Bio-eBeam will definitely focus on life sciences. In this field, can we become number one in the world again? That is our goal."

Article reproduced from:https://www.instrument.com.cn/news/20241218/760162.shtml

Source: Instrument Information Network

E-mail:Contact@bio-ebeam.com

Telephone: 86-574-86590910

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