U.S. firm pitches Taiwan on making semiconductor materials in space

Taipei, Jan. 14 (CNA) Representatives of American space company Axiom Space visited Taiwan in late November last year to discuss the possibility of potential collaborations in the future that would take Taiwan's manufacturing of its flagship semiconductors into space.

The company, which operates end-to-end missions to the International Space Station (ISS), made the pitch at an international space science meeting in Kaohsiung held by the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) in late November.

Aside from conducting missions to the ISS, Axiom Space is one of a number of private entities developing the station's successor as the ISS itself nears its retirement in 2030.

Currently, however, the company's Axiom Station is the only one allowed to have its space station modules connect with the ISS in preparation for the existing station's retirement.

Manufacturing in space

Among those in Taiwan to present the vision of Axiom Space was Dr. Koichi Wakata, the company's chief technology officer for Asia-Pacific and resident astronaut.

Wakata is also the first ISS commander to have hailed from Japan.

Wakata gained prominence in Taiwan in 2023 as an ISS astronaut when he put an experiment proposed by a student at Taiwan's National Central University -- to see whether water forms a vortex without the pull of gravity -- to the test."

Speaking with CNA during the event, Wakata said he expected the commercial space era to offer companies the chance to use microgravity and vacuum environments on space stations to conduct groundbreaking research and produce revolutionary products in space.

Among the sectors that could benefit from those conditions, Wakata said, are the biotechnology, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and semiconductor material sectors, as well as 3D printing of artificial organs.

He suggested that Axiom Space could partner with Taiwan on the company's "in-space manufacturing" vision to produce semiconductors using a microgravity environment made possible through low-Earth orbit (LEO) positioning.

"Your country is very highly established in the field of technology, as a matter of fact, like semiconductor engineering," Wakata said.

The potential of LEO

More specifically, Divya Panchanathan, Axiom Space's global head of in-space semiconductors commercialization, told CNA that some advanced semiconductor materials cannot be produced on a large scale on Earth because gravity introduces defects in the crystal structure during wafer manufacturing.

Impurities can also exist in the atmosphere or in the containers used during the processing of crystals, the foundational material of the semiconductor industry, she said.

In LEO, however, microgravity helps crystals grow more uniformly, and using the vacuum environment of space or performing containerless processing can more effectively control impurities, Panchanathan said.

Under those conditions, larger crystals with excellent electrical properties can be produced, providing higher yields, which could offset the costs of production in space and render it cost-effective, she said.

Wakata added: "In space, utilizing the microgravity environment, we will be able to manufacture products that are valuable but difficult to make on Earth due to gravity."

He envisioned future partnerships in which Axiom Space assists Taiwanese companies in sending their experiments to the ISS, and after 2030 when the ISS is retired, the experiments could continue on Axiom Space's commercial space station.

Once research results are mature, companies could send manufacturing equipment to produce goods in space, and take advantage of the dedicated space modules for in-space manufacturing that Axiom Space is currently building, Wakata said.

"We do a lot of research in microgravity to develop new medicine that will benefit the entire world and also new material[s]," he added. "So these kind of experiments, discoveries that we conduct in space will benefit the growth of this country."

Commercial opportunities abound in space, and beyond semiconductor materials, Taiwan could also focus on machinery, textiles, and artificial intelligence (AI) as potential areas for collaboration with supply chain partners around the world, he said.

To explore such prospects, Axiom Space initially sent a delegation to Taiwan in 2023 to explore cooperation opportunities before a 2024 visit to the Houston-based company by local government officials from Pingtung County reaffirmed partnership possibilities.