Second 2024 TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, geCKo materialsreturned to the stage at this year’s show to debut new products as it pushes deeper into commercializing its technology.
The founder Dr. Capella Kerst revealed four new uses for geCKo’s super-strong dry adhesive: a semiconductor wafer handling tool, a robotic gripper for smooth surfaces (such as solar panels or glass), a curved robotic “end” for more irregular shapes, and an all-purpose gripper for robotic arms.
geCKo technology is inspired by the way real-life lizards use their legs to grip surfaces. Kerst pitches it as a new form of Velcro, but one that leaves no residue, can be attached and detached quickly, and requires no electrical charge or suction. A one-inch tile of the material can hold 16 pounds, and geCKo dry adhesive can adhere up to 120,000 times — and can stay attached for seconds, minutes or years.
The ability to quickly adapt dry glue to existing manufacturing, assembly and other robotic applications has proven popular. Kerst’s company won Ford, NASA and Pacific Gas & Electric as clients before it even competed on last year’s Battlefield stage.
“Has this year gone by as fast for anyone else as it has for us?” Kerst said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday. geCKo’s CEO said her company has tripled the size of its team since last year’s show and completed an $8 million fundraiser. And geCKo’s dry glue has been used on six space missions in the past year — a testament to the material’s ability to work in multiple environments, including vacuum, according to Kerst.
On stage Wednesday, Kerst showed off a Fanuc robotic arm that uses six geCKo tiles to quickly grab and move objects, before showing videos of the other commercialized applications.
In one of these videos, Kerst demonstrated geCKo’s hardware being used to safely move semiconductor wafers faster than current suction or vacuum technology allows.
“Our customers at TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Kawasaki said we have a goal [move the wafers] at 2Gs of acceleration,” he said. “We decided to blow them out of the water and do 5.4Gs of acceleration repeatedly, reliably, using geCKo materials.”
