Scrona AG, the additive manufacturing startup and world record holder of the smallest ever printed color picture, today announced the closing of its $9.6 million Series A financing.  This round was led by AM Ventures with syndicate partners including TRUMPF Venture, Verve Ventures, and Manz GmbH Management Consulting and Investment. The $9.6 million includes $6.7 million from Series A funding and $2.9 million from a grant by Swiss Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

Scrona also announced the industry’s first multi-nozzle electrostatic printhead for mass manufacturing to speed product invention in an economical and eco-friendly way, with unprecedented printing resolution in the sub-micrometer range.  The new capital will allow Scrona to accelerate the industrialization and commercialization of this novel printing technology and develop new applications across multiple industries including semiconductor manufacturing, high-end displays, electronics, and PCB.  For example, the resolution and layer thickness control of Scrona’s technology enables printing of quantum dot RGB color filters for high-brightness, full-color micro LED displays in augmented reality glasses for gaming and metaverse applications.

“Scrona is enabling customers to digitally print the impossible”

“Scrona is enabling customers to digitally print the impossible – on any material, at scale, improving the speed, accuracy and cost of manufacturing today and tomorrow’s innovative products,” said Dr. Patrick Galliker, co-founder and CEO of Scrona. “We are very excited to be supported by this syndicate of expert investors who understand the disruptive potential of Scrona‘s scalable printing technology, which has the ability to reduce manufacturing steps 10-fold, while also significantly reducing material, energy and water usage. ”

The technology is based on the electrostatic ejection principle which provides very fine, submicron-scale printing and jetting, while allowing the adoption of various ink materials—such as metals, dielectrics, organic, and biomaterials, with inks that are more than 100 times more viscous than those compatible with conventional inkjet printheads, delivering flexibility and cost-effectiveness in manufacturing. Until now, printing of inks with unlike properties from one and the same printhead with high resolution and throughput has not been possible.

Scrona’s technology enables simultaneous printing from a large nozzle array, with the following advantages compared to conventional inkjet:

• Ultra-high-resolution printing – 100x higher resolution
• High-speed printing – 10x higher ejection frequency
• Smaller droplets not only for higher precision but also for fast drying
• 3D printing. Aspect ratios >10:1 possible, nanometer layer thickness control
• MEMS printhead customization, dynamically and fully programmable
• Prevention of nozzle clogging by proprietary Environmental Control System (ECS)

“There is enormous potential of the Scrona technology in additive manufacturing because its technology can process materials that are simply not processable with other printheads today, “ said Johann Oberhofer, Managing Partner at AM Ventures. “The combination of the highest resolution and the ability to overcome restrictions around high-performance materials of current processes is unique.  I expect that Scrona’s technology will enable completely new applications and we are glad to accompany them on their journey together with a strong investor line-up.”

Dieter Kraft, Managing Director at TRUMPF Venture, adds: “Scrona’s solid and complementary team managed to create a breakthrough technological innovation via the replacement of the piezo print heads.”

“A broad spectrum of materials can be printed at industrial scale with Scrona’s advantageous technology. This is a quantum leap for a wide range of industries from semiconductors to molecular printing in biotechnology,” says Michael Blank, Head of Verve Ventures’ investment team.