Pathological

If Nanox had even one bit of useful technology, why would the CEO be compelled to lie every time about it when he speaks publicly?

 

Source: wowTV

Following is an excerpt from the CEO interview at the unveiling ceremony of the unfinished Nanox Korean FAB that is supposed to produce fake chips and come online in the middle of the biggest chip glut next year.

126 years ago Wilhelm Roentgen invented the Edison light of X-ray, called X-ray.  It is analog.  It is based on heat.  Nanox invented the LED of x-ray, which is cold and digital, and much reduced cost.  X-ray was based on filament, but with Nanox, it is based on semiconductor.

We are very close to SK Hynix, which is one of the largest MEMS semiconductor manufacturers, and it is very similar to what we do here.

Lie Number 1:  Wilhelm Roentgen did not invent x-rays - he discovered them using equipment that already existed - the cold-cathode tube.  He said so in the first paragraph of his paper:  

... a Hittorf's vacuum tube, or through a well-exhausted Crookes' or Lenard's tube."  (translation, original).  

Nanox CEO is, of course, aware of this fact, as the Roentgen paper is cited in the first paragraph of Nanox own white paper on cold cathodes.

Those are all cold-cathode tubes and they do not have filaments.  The filament-based or "hot-cathode" x-ray tube was not invented until 1913, according to the first page of Nanox white paper. 

Lie Number 2:  X-ray generation for medical imaging is not and was never based on heat.  Heat is a side effect of the inefficient way of x-ray generation in the x-ray tube.  In any x-ray tube, electrons driven by very high voltage smash into an anode target, and release less than 1% of their energy as useful x-rays, while the rest is wasted as heat.  The process is exactly the same for both the cold and hot cathodes.

Lie Number 3:  Nanox has not invented anything.  Nanox proposed x-ray source is supposed to be a cheap dental x-ray tube -  it has nothing to do with an LED.  X-rays, unlike visible light or even UV light, cannot be generated by LEDs, as the semiconductor bandgaps are not wide enough.  The proposed Nanox tube is just as analog and digital as the regular dental x-ray tubes, but would be more expensive if real (because any chip, obviously, would be more expensive than the filament - a short piece of wire) and would have worse performance. Of course, a fake Nanox tube must cost less than a regular dental x-ray tube (which can be bought on eBay for $80 or so, nowhere near the $150,000, or $50,000 lately, claimed by the CEO elsewhere).

Lie Number 4:  Nanox proposed (and fake) x-ray source is not based on semiconductors.  Nanox annual report states (page 59): 

Our X-ray source is a MEMs-based semiconductor cathode that achieves electron emission by a non-thermionic low-voltage trigger to approximately 100 million nano-scale molybdenum cones that act as multiple electron “guns,” instead of a single heated filament.

Molybdenum, however, is not a semiconductor (it is as conductive as the filament's tungsten)   Oh, and Nanox "low-voltage trigger" is supposed to be 50V (per white paper), while traditional filament uses less than 5V.

Lie Number 5:  SK Hynix is not one of the largest MEMS semiconductor manufacturers.  Those would be Bosch, Broadcom, Qorvo, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Goermicro, HP, Knowles, TDK and Infineon.  SK Hynix makes real memory chips, while Nanox has never designed or made a single working chip that can serve as a cold cathode of a commercially-ready x-ray source, contrary to its investment presentations.  The proposed Nanox chip is not MEMS anyway, as there is nothing mechanical or moving/vibrating/resonating/etc. about it - it is supposed to be just a bunch of pins in round "holes."

Update:  SK Hynix is nowhere to be found in this chart by Yole, even though SK Hynix insists that it has some MEMS business (microphone and pressure sensors planned on its foundry side).