About APT

Additive Process Technologies Ltd., (APT) a privately held and internally funded UK company, has developed a revolutionary process to manufacture solid metal conductor packages of virtually unlimited length via a unique bathless electroplating process where substrates are not submerged nor do elements in the plating field need to be connected with one another or masked.

This innovative, fully automatic process, Focussed Field Deposition (FFD), represents the world’s first quantum leap in electroplating since two other Englishmen, George and Henry Elkington, were awarded the first patents for electroplating in 1840. Today, the novel enabling properties of FFD create one of the most compelling value propositions in the electronic and electric transmission space, rewriting the rules for producing metallic conductors on nearly any planar substrate. And soon, directly onto 3-D structures.

Conceived by APT’s founders in 1997, validated from commissioned world class research in autumn 1999 at Oxford University with OCIAM (Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) and confirmed with scientists at Loughborough University in 2003, FFD replaces heavier, costly discrete wires throughout the transportation industry to effect lighter weight robust installations, and enables the holistic production of wireless solutions.

During more than the past decade, and still today, the cost drivers of item-level RFID tags remain the single crystal CMOS IC and overall tag packaging. Addressing the latter, APT’s scalable FFD system facilitates complete RFID and NFC item-level tags at the lowest possible cost by eliminating intermediate substrates, conventional flip-chip process and conductive adhesives, producing waste free solid electrodeposited copper antenna – at only the ideal thickness – directly onto the individual pads of CMOS ICs or developing printed semiconductors, on most substrates, even on paper. This same core technology connects sensor arrays for vehicle and human health-monitoring, displays, energy generating and heating systems in a variety of industries, both for civilian and military applications.

FFD’s potential to create radically new transformative functionalities, at lower cost and in an energy efficient environmentally responsible way, is unique in the world.