The "nano" in Nanox isn't

So, Nanox has been boasting in the technology section on its website: 

Over nine years of development by a Japanese and Israeli engineering team, produced a ‎stable Cold-Cathode field emission MEMS silicon‎. Using proprietary Micro-Electrical-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) techniques, ‎millions of nanoscale gates are fabricated on each silicon chip. ‎Nanox emitters are far more uniform than carbon nanotubes (CNT) and are orders of ‎magnitude smaller than conventional Spindt-type cathodes‎. ‍

But is any of it true?  For example, has Nanox been able to miniaturize a technology that was a complete failure and make it potentially successful?  The answer is:  No!

If Nanox' emitters are "orders of magnitude smaller" than conventional Spindt-type cathodes, this means they are smaller than 1/100 the size of the "conventional" emitters (that's two orders of magnitude).  Here is how Nanox emitters are supposed to look like under an electron microscope (Slide 13, January 2021 JP Morgan presentation).

They look tiny, but how tiny are they?  Nanox is withholding that information.  Luckily, Nanox predecessor company has already published the original image - in early 2016, in a one-page "Nanox Technology Brochure" - with an embedded scale in it, like any regular image, or micrograph, generated from a commercial electron microscope.  All we have to do is use that scale to measure the diameter of the gate holes and the distance between them, and compare to say state-of-the-art Spindt emitters twenty years ago.

Aha.  So the holes are about 300nm in diameter and the distance between them is about 500nm.

And, what was the state-of-the-art twenty years ago, in year 2001?  Here is a picture from the Motorola paper titled "Field Emission Displays: a critical review" 

Uh-oh.  Turns out the Spindt holes from Candescent Technologies were actually smaller - 100nm in diameter, and intentionally placed at random distances.

Is it possible that somehow Nanox' team did not know about those developments twenty years ago?  Nope.  Here is why.  According to the unofficial history of the Spindt scam,  three years prior, Sony, desperate to maintain its relevance in the TV market, but completely clueless, joined forces with Candescent.

In November 1998, CTC announced an agreement with Sony Corporation for joint development of a 14-inch diagonal FED by the year 2000. Both companies pledged to spend $50 million on this effort. Most of the work would be performed at CTC's plants. A team of six Sony engineers were sent to San Jose to begin the work, with some additional staff dedicated to the project in Japan

Motorola had already canceled its project in 1999, thus the paper in 2001, due to inability to "solve some basic technology problems."  Candescent went bankrupt in 2004.  It took Sony a few more years to realize its mistake, but the $1 billion R&D spending is a complete myth.

So, to reiterate, ‎Nanox emitters are not orders of ‎magnitude smaller than conventional Spindt-type cathodes‎ - they are, in fact, LARGER.  Not that it matters, because Nanox, contrary to the false claims in the Prospectus and elsewhere, has no access to facilities to fabricate them commercially.

And the "nano" should have been a red flag anyway - MEMS in the supposed Nanox "Cold-Cathode field emission MEMS silicon" stands for micro-electro-mechanical systems.  Electro, not electrical.  Micro, not nano.  And there is nothing mechanical (moving) - the "electro-ns" do not count.

Ok, but what about those 100 million emitters in Slide 13 above?  Well, that number is possible.  Assuming those are positioned in a 10,000 x 10,000 square, and assuming 800nm distance between the tips, that gets us to a 8mm x 8mm "chip," ballpark.  But such a chip, even if it were real, is not changing anything.

In case anyone was wondering how big the Spindt emitters were 50 years ago, here is a diagram and a micrograph from the 1976 Spindt paper.  The gate hole diameter is 1,500 nm.  So Nanox emitter is just 1/5 of it, not 1/100.

Update March 29, 2021:  reworded and added the original Spindt emitter size.

Update March 29, 2021:  Wikipedia's page on Field Emitter Arrays have an interesting entry about nano-Spindts.

Nano-Spindt arrays represent an evolution of the traditional Spindt-type emitter. Each individual tip is several orders of magnitude smaller; as a result, gate voltages can be lower, since the distance from tip to gate is reduced. In addition, the current extracted from each individual tip is lower, which should result in improved reliability.

How did this incorrect and misleading entry wind up on wiki?  After checking the edit history, it turns out Nanox added it on December 22, 2015, a few days after the failed attempt by Nanox predecessor to market its fake cathode at RSNA 2015 (Nanox current CEO was then the Chief Strategy Officer).  Here is who added it:

My name is Joshua Lilienstein. I am an American medical doctor, now specializing in medical device development. I currently serve as Chief Medical Officer for Nanox Imaging, Plc., a Japan-based startup. Nanox's core technology is the field effect cathode. I will be editing entries that pertain to this technology, and specifically, in its application to medical imaging. I am aware of Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest policies, and will endeavor to abide by them.

At least he was honest about something.

He referenced an interesting paper that does not support his wiki entry in any way, but describes the long-lost x-ray detector, SAPHIRE, that was supposed to use nano-Spindts.  This is a flashback to the times when Nanox team "believed" that the x-ray detector was more important than the x-ray source.

The weight of a human, CE Marking, and the rest

The fake battery-powered Nanox.Arc 1.0 body scanner can withstand a human, according to a photo shown in June 2020 Haaretz article.

 

Nanox CEO and founder Ran Poliakine, January 15, 2020.source: Haaretz/LUZ Corporate Photography

So, what did the CEO tell the Israeli publication:

"The Nanox.ARC was distantly inspired by the sickbay of the 1960s television series Star Trek, where “Bones” McCoy would swipe a device over a patient to get a complete instant medical picture."  OK, so Nanox.Arc is fiction?

"On a practical level, the research and development was born of a failed project at the Japanese company Sony to develop LED screens."  Not OK - it was a failed project, but nothing to do with LED (light-emitting diodes)

"compared to just $10,000 and 70 kilos for the Nanox"  Not OK.  Nanox is now saying tens of thousands of dollars, and weight is no longer discussed.

"The company has applied for permits to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Europe’s CE and Israeli regulators."  Really, really not OK!!! There are no such "permits."  Nanox is now saying it has not submitted for FDA 510(k) clearance of the magic device, and that it has not submitted for CE Marking, and that means that it cannot register with the Israeli Ministry of Health.  

"Nanox is readying to install a device at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center to be used for developing novel early-detection and screening protocols to promote global preventive healthcare practices. Research is scheduled to begin the first quarter of 2021."  Not OK.  It is not happening.

"A [Sony] team worked on the idea [for a novel LED screen] for seven years at a cost of more than $1 billion. The project never yielded the screen because Sony canned it after Panasonic got to the market with a similar, lower-cost device. But along the way the team designed tiny silicon chips capable of creating consistent and exacting screenshot images, Poliakine said."  Not OK at all.  The story is quite a bit different, there was no $1 billion, and there are no such chips "creating consistent and exacting screenshot images."

"X-ray technology was developed at the end of the 19th century and to this day uses the same basic technology, based on heating a metal filament to 2000 degrees Centigrade."  Not OK.  The metal filament thing was invented in 1913 by General Electric (the former employer of Nanox Advisory Board chair).  Until then, X-ray technology used Nanox, that is cold-cathode, technology.

"The filament emits electrons that collide with an anode to create x-rays. The process uses a lot of electricity to keep the device cool."  Not OK.  Nanox process needs just as much electricity to keep the device cool.

"Nanox uses a proprietary silicon chip embedded with 100 million microcones that generate x-rays There are no moving parts, no need for cooling and no need for lots of electric power."  Not OK.  Nanox proposed tube performs exactly the same and uses the same power as a cheap Chinese tube unsuitable for medical imaging.  And, nope, Nanox does not have a novel tube that can be used in a commercial device. 

"Nanox ... employs 60 people, 38 in its Israel R&D center ad the rest at production facilities in Japan, the U.S. and South Korea."  Not OK.  Nanox has no production facilities anywhere.

Update March 25, 2021:  The original $1 billion thing seems to come from the June 2019 press release by Nanox predecessor (the current Nanox was incorporated in December 2018 but did not start "operations" until September 2019, per prospectus)

Update September 28, 2021: The April 2020 Hadassah press release says:

Over $1 billion and 15 years of development have been invested in revolutionizing the X-Ray source...

So, 7 years at Sony and 8 years at Nanox and Nanox predecessor?  Nope.  First, all Sony did was to send 6 "engineers" to the offices of Candescent to "learn" about the tech after it signed an agreement with it in November 1998 - there is no evidence that any independent devlopment.  Second, NanoX Imaging (Nanox predecessor) was "a multinational start-up established in 2012," but it was developing x-ray detectors not sources!