Astral Materials is driving the next leap in materials engineering by manufacturing semiconductors of a quality and consistency that cannot be made on Earth. The company’s proprietary microgravity crystal growth furnace produces ultra-high-quality semiconductor crystals that address the growing needs of advanced applications currently bottlenecked by semiconductor crystal quality.
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Jessica Frick
Jessica Frick is the CEO of Astral Materials, building off her postdoctoral research in Professor Debbie Senesky’s XLab at Stanford University. She is passionate about using microgravity as a manufacturing tool to define humanity’s next Material Age. Frick earned her B.S. in chemistry from the University of Michigan and completed her Ph.D. in chemistry and materials science at Princeton University as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, where she built her foundational knowledge on semiconductor crystal growth.
Jiya Janowitz
Jiya Janowitz is the CTO of Astral Materials, where he is the team’s critical link between its materials manufacturing goals and building hardware that integrates with commercial space infrastructure. Janowitz completed his B.S. in materials science and his M.S. in aerospace engineering at Stanford University, where he performed research in Professor Debbie Senesky’s XLab. Before joining Astral Materials, Janowitz led the development of several successful automated science payloads that flew to the International Space Station.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
The effects of gravity fundamentally limit the quality of the semiconductor crystals that can be grown on Earth. Gravity is the root cause of phenomena like natural convection, hydrostatic pressure, buoyancy, and container interactions, all of which are detrimental to crystal growth. Poor quality crystals limit semiconductor device lifetime and performance, specifically in advanced applications that are sensitive to noise, such as quantum computing, optoelectronics, and high-power devices. The scalability of these applications is bottlenecked by a lack of ultra-high quality semiconductors with batch-to-batch consistency.
Technology Vision
State of the art crystal growth techniques utilize band-aid solutions to combat the detrimental effects of gravity during crystal growth. These techniques are expensive, energy-intensive, and ultimately only reduce—rather than eliminate—these effects. Astral Materials is addressing the root of the problem by moving crystal growth to space, where the effects of gravity are removed from the process entirely. Astral Materials utilizes their microgravity crystal growth furnace to manufacture semiconductor crystals of a quality and consistency that cannot be achieved on Earth, which will be the key to scaling advanced applications that are currently bottlenecked by crystal quality.
Potential for Impact
Semiconductors are the foundation of modern technology—powering everything from healthcare monitoring to global telecommunications. As with any complex system, the performance of a semiconductor device is only as good as the quality of its components. Higher-quality semiconductors enable devices that last longer, function across broader environmental ranges, and handle higher voltages. These gains at the device level translate to systems that are more compact, require less maintenance, and can reliably scale. By producing ultra-high-quality semiconductors in the microgravity environment of space, Astral Materials unlocks a new era of performance for semiconductor devices and the systems they power.
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Astral Materials