Vancouver, B.C.: Homerun Resources Inc. (“Homerun” or the “Company”) (TSXV: HMR) (OTCQB: HMRFF) is pleased to provide a comprehensive strategic update on the expansion of its high-purity silica feedstock pathway to support the next-generation Fused Silica, Silicon and Silicon Carbide (SiC) integrated photonics, advanced telecommunications, and quantum networking industries. Anchored by the Company’s premier high-purity, low-iron silica resources in the Santa Maria Eterna (SME) Silica Valley in Belmonte, Bahia, Brazil, Homerun is establishing itself as a vertically integrated non-China feedstock supplier for mission-critical clean energy and deep-tech semiconductor value chains in the Americas.
UC Davis Collaboration and Chemical-Free Laser Purification (Patent Pending)
The Company has successfully worked in partnership with the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in California, USA, to process the high-purity SME silica sand into fused silica, silicon and silicon carbide suitable for semiconductor feedstocks and substrates. This partnership represents a fundamental pillar in the Company’s strategy to deliver unmatched feedstock security to Western technology manufacturers during a period of intense geopolitical competition and supply chain volatility.
Professor Risbud, leading the UC Davis Materials Lab, commented on the breakthroughs achieved through this collaborative effort:
“Our research is the centerpiece of our US semiconductor and photonics innovations, and the UC Davis and Homerun collaboration has created disruptive approaches for the provision of a supply chain of purified silica sand for the US semiconductor industry. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) represents 99% of the US semiconductor industry and seeks to strengthen USA development of cutting-edge technologies during intense global competition. Silica sand is a critical source for the silica and silicon-based feedstocks and substrates in that industry. As an example of our collaborative innovation, our research group at UC Davis has created a patent-pending laser processing solution for the purification of silica sand to plus 4N purity (+99.99%) and thus provide an excellent USA based supply chain of quartz to the rapidly growing semiconductor industry. The process utilizes high-purity silica sand sourced from Homerun’s SME resources in Brazil as the key raw material. This silica sand undergoes a pre-treatment process to ensure particle uniformity and homogeneity. Subsequently, the material is subjected to irradiation using a pulsed laser system. The methodology is entirely devoid of chemical inputs, highlighting its potential as an environmentally sustainable protocol within the silica value chain. With its promising scalability, this innovative approach holds the potential to significantly contribute to the self-reliance of the USA in high purity silica production for the silicon and silicon carbide semiconductor and photonic device industries.”
The Silicon and Silicon Carbide (SiC) Value Chains: From Earth to High-Tech Substrates
To supply the semiconductor and photonics sectors, raw materials must undergo a highly controlled, sophisticated physical and chemical transformation. Homerun’s focus on the Si and SiC value chains covers the entire refined continuum, converting base earth elements into semiconductor-grade substrates through four critical stages:
Stage 1: Precursor Synthesis
The production cycle begins with high-temperature carbochlorination. Ground, dry silica (as provided from the SME Silica Valley) is blended uniformly with graphite powder (provided from supply partnership with affiliated company, Bahia Graphite). This solid mixture is heated in a reactor to extreme temperatures of 800°C to 1100°C while passing dry chlorine gas. The reaction extracts silicon tetrachloride (SiCl4) as a gas, which is cooled, condensed into a liquid state, and meticulously purified via fractional distillation. Through the Direct Process, methyl chloride (CH3Cl) gas is passed over heated elemental silicon over a copper catalyst at 300°C, and subsequent hydrolysis removes chlorine atoms to bridge elemental silicon into siloxanes, specifically Polydimethylsiloxane. Finally, waste siloxane undergoes thermal decomposition where intense heat breaks the silicon-carbon and silicon-oxygen bonds, yielding a highly concentrated, silicon- and carbon-rich solid residue that serves as the crucial precursor for high-temperature SiC synthesis.
Stage 2: Advanced Thermal Consolidation & Synthesis
Synthesizing high-purity silicon carbide from precursors is historically an energy-intensive, multi-day process. Homerun’s strategic roadmap leverages advanced thermal consolidation techniques (co-developed with UC Davis) that achieve synthesis in milliseconds to minutes with drastically lower energy per batch:
Flash Joule Heating (FJH): A high-intensity thermal processing technique. Extremely rapid, high-voltage electrical discharges induce temperature spikes between 1,700°C and 2,200°C in milliseconds to seconds, forcing the immediate reduction of the silica matrix by internal carbon to synthesize high-purity SiC.
Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS): By applying uniaxial pressure on graphite dies containing precursor powders at 1350°C to 1400°C, room-temperature on-off pulsing activates powder surfaces. This process consolidates the powders into fused silica glass or SiC disks and plates in minutes rather than hours.
Directed Energy Deposition (DED): Utilizing direct laser melting of powders onto refractory ceramic surfaces, this method enables the rapid manufacturing of defined shapes and customized thicknesses of fused silica or SiC plates.
Comparison of Traditional vs. FJH-SPS-DED Approaches
| Metric | Traditional Acheson/Induction | FJH-SPS-DED Methods |
| Duration | Hours to days | Milliseconds to seconds to Minutes(max) |
| Energy Profile | High total consumption | Low energy per batch |
| Product Output | Large crystalline boules/powders | Nanowires or fine powders and bulk disks or plates |
| Wafer Readiness | High (standard industry feedstock) | Minimal post-processing if any |
Stage 3: Single-Crystal Growth
The consolidated high-purity raw powder is treated at ultra-high temperatures exceeding 2,000°C in a Physical Vapor Transport (PVT) furnace. At these extreme temperatures, the raw unaligned poly-crystalline powder sublimes and re-condenses onto a seed crystal, forcing the chaotic precursor material into a flawless, single-crystal SiC ingot (boule). This grown boule undergoes precise X-ray orientation to map the crystal plane, followed by outer-diameter grinding and cropping into a standardized cylindrical shape.
Stage 4: Precision Slicing & Atomic Finishing
The finished cylindrical boule is fed into high-precision multi-wire saws, which sheer the single-crystal ingot into thin, bare circular wafers measuring strictly under 1 mm in thickness. Rough-cut surfaces are flattened during lapping and grinding via industrial diamond abrasive slurries to eliminate saw marks and ensure strict parallelism. The final atomic finish is achieved through Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP), a dual mechanical and chemical polishing process that eradicates any remaining subsurface micro-defects, resulting in a mirror-like, atom-flat surface perfectly prepared for downstream epitaxy.
The Paradigm Shift: Silicon Carbide in Photonics
Modern microelectronics are rapidly approaching their fundamental physical limits, prompting an industry-wide transition toward integrated photonics systems that manipulate photons instead of electrons to eliminate mass-related lag and electromagnetic interference. While silicon is the undisputed king of integrated electronics, it possesses critical physical limitations that make it highly inefficient for next-generation optical and quantum circuits.
Silicon Carbide (specifically the 4H-SiC polytype) represents a major material paradigm shift. Its wide electronic bandgap completely eliminates two-photon absorption at telecommunication wavelengths (a major loss mechanism in legacy silicon devices), allowing for zero-degradation handling of high-power light. Additionally, 4H-SiC exhibits a high refractive index for compact device architectures, robust second-order and third-order optical non-linearities, and a thermal conductivity more than three times higher than silicon, completely preventing thermal distortion in high-power, space-based, or harsh telecommunication environments (AI Data Processing).
The table below contrasts the material and optical performance metrics of legacy silicon against silicon carbide, demonstrating the profound technological advantages of SiC in photonics:
| Metric | Legacy Silicon (Si) | Silicon Carbide (SiC) | Commercial & Technology Impact |
| Electronic Bandgap | 1.1 eV (Indirect bandgap; inefficient for light emission) | 3.23 eV (Wide electronic bandgap) | Enables zero-degradation handling of high-power light in sub-micron circuits, preventing two-photon absorption at telecom wavelengths. |
| Refractive Index (RI) | ~3.4 (High index; prone to mode dispersion at short bands) | 2.6 to 2.7 (Excellent single-mode index stability) | Balances extreme power handling with precise, tight light confinement for high-speed routing and ultra-compact footprints. |
| Optical Nonlinearities | Weak / Limited (Centro-symmetric; lacks 2nd-order nonlinearity) | Strong 2nd and 3rd-order susceptibility | Unlocks highly efficient on-chip wavelength conversion, second-harmonic generation (SHG), and Kerr octave-spanning frequency combs. |
| Thermal Conductivity | 150 W/m·K | 490 W/m·K (Over three times higher than legacy silicon) | Rapidly dissipates localized heat, preventing thermal distortion or signal drift in extreme temperature, radiation, or space environments. |
| Quantum Spin Defects | Highly limited (Requires extreme millikelvin cryogenic operation) | Outstanding (Hosts stable room-temperature spin qubits) | Harbors point defects (e.g., silicon vacancy, V_Si, and divacancies) with long coherence times, powering on-chip quantum networks. |
Silicon Carbide-on-Insulator (SiCOI) Platforms and Quantum Networks
By fashioning a thin, sub-micron layer (500–600 nm) of high-quality single-crystal 4H-SiC on top of an insulating silicon dioxide (SiO2) substrate, the Silicon Carbide-on-Insulator (SiCOI) platform has emerged as a premier architecture for integrated optical systems. This platform combines high refractive index light confinement with established CMOS-compatible fabrication processes. Key photonic components have recently achieved extraordinary, record-breaking performance benchmarks:
Ultra-Low-Loss Waveguides: Waveguides encapsulated in silicon dioxide have demonstrated propagation losses as low as 0.38 dB/cm at telecommunication wavelengths, preserving signal integrity across complex photonic layouts.
Record Quality Factors (High-Q): Microdisk resonators on SiCOI have achieved record loaded quality factors of up to 6.75 million, while microring resonators have surpassed 5.6 million. These exceptionally high Q-factors drastically reduce the power threshold required to trigger advanced optical phenomena.
High-Speed Electro-Optic Modulators: Capitalizing on SiC’s linear electro-optic effect, integrated modulators have demonstrated data transmission rates up to 15 Gbit/s at CMOS-level drive voltages, providing low-insertion-loss, high-speed switching capabilities.
Integrated Raman Lasers: Utilizing stimulated Raman scattering in low-loss micro-resonators, researchers have demonstrated integrated Raman lasers on SiCOI with low lasing thresholds of 2.5 mW and conversion efficiencies exceeding 50%. This enables on-chip translation of light into newly engineered wavelengths.
Beyond classical optical communications, the SiCOI platform represents a breakthrough for quantum information processing. The material naturally hosts optically addressable, room-temperature stable spin defects, such as the silicon mono-vacancy (VSi) and divacancies, which function as qubits with coherent spin-state control. High-quality single-photon emission heralded single-photon sources, and time-bin entanglement are readily achievable on-chip, presenting a path toward secure quantum key distribution (QKD), quantum memories, and fiber-optic quantum repeaters. These devices can be directly co-integrated with traditional silicon electronics on separate CMOS-compatible wafers, bypassing the expensive assembly hurdles that limit competing wide-bandgap platforms.
Overcoming the Critical Material Bottleneck
While the underlying physics of Silicon Carbide integrated photonics are fully solved and scientifically validated, the primary hurdle to widespread commercialization is manufacturing scalability. To transition these deep-tech innovations from small-scale laboratory environments to large-scale commercial foundries, the industry requires an ultra-pure, defect-free supply chain of raw material.
Specifically, quantum photonic circuits demand an exceptionally high “quantum grade” electronic purity, requiring nitrogen and transition metal impurities to a threshold that is significantly cleaner than the current industrial standards for high-power power electronics. Achieving this extreme level of purity is impossible using standard, run-of-the-mill industrial silica feedstock. Control must be established at the very beginning of the value chain: the raw silica sand itself.
Homerun Resources’ unique high-purity, low-iron silica resources from the SME Silica Valley in Brazil provide the essential, highly uniform chemical composition needed to achieve these ultra-pure semiconductor- and quantum-grade thresholds. By starting with an inherently superior raw feedstock and applying the Company’s chemical-free, patent-pending laser purification technology, Homerun is systematically addressing this commercial bottleneck.
To achieve commercial dominance in this high-barrier sector, Homerun’s operations are guided by three core strategic directives:
Aggressive Cost Reduction: Systematically driving down costs at every step of the fabrication pipeline from chemical precursor extraction to final atomic polishing, to ensure the definitive cost-competitiveness of Fused Silica, Silicon and SiC wafers.
Targeted R&D Investigation: Directing capital and technical resources into the most urgent research areas, specifically the rapid thermal consolidation of high-purity SiC powders to bypass slow, energy-intensive legacy techniques.
Unlocking Marketable Yields: Converting complex, deep-tech engineering challenges into highly optimized, scalable, and repeatable manufacturing processes designed to deliver exceptionally high product yields for global semiconductor buyers.
CEO Strategic Commentary
Brian Leeners, CEO of Homerun, highlighted how controlling this raw material pipeline is the absolute prerequisite for commercializing next-generation technologies:
“Our vision since the first discovery of the SME Silica Sand District has been to take that material into its highest use in the Energy and Technology Value Chains. We are on path in Solar Glass, Energy Storage, Silicon, Silicon Carbide and Photonics working with Professor Risbud and his incredible team at UC Davis. High purity feedstock and technical disruption are the key to the Critical Materials Value Chain Transition and that is the path we have followed and will continue. Our efforts are now attracting strategic global attention as are the key materials sectors within which we are focused.”
Global Semiconductor Market Momentum
The strategic expansion of Homerun’s verticals occurs during a period of unprecedented expansion in the global chip industry. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) recently announced that global semiconductor sales reached $403.3 billion during the second quarter of 2026, marking a staggering 35.1% increase compared to the first quarter of 2026. This monumental surge is further underscored by monthly sales data compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization, which reports that global sales in June 2026 alone reached $134.5 billion, a massive 123.6% year-over-year increase compared to June 2025, and a 9.7% sequential monthly increase over May 2026.
With global chip sales formally projected to exceed $1.5 trillion in 2026, the demand for stable, non-China feedstocks has reached a critical flashpoint. Homerun is establishing a pathway that addresses this multi-billion-dollar demand directly, linking raw earth advantages in Brazil to high-tech manufacturing.
Reference: TSMC – Silicon Photonics to Top 50% of Transceiver Market by 2027
Reference: Pioneering the future with silicon carbide integrated photonics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030399224013689?via%3Dihub
Reference: Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 35.1% from Q1 2026 to Q2 2026
https://www.semiconductors.org/global-semiconductor-sales-increase-35-1-from-q1-2026-to-q2-2026/
Qualified Person
Mr. Carlos Henrique Lourenço Bastos is a Senior Geologist, M.Sc., and an Independent Qualified Person registered with the Brazilian Commission for Resources and Reserves (CBRR). Mr. Carlos Henrique Lourenço Bastos has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this News Release. He is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (FAusIMM) and a member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME).
About Homerun (www.homerunresources.com / www.homerunenergy.com)
Homerun is building the silica-powered backbone of the energy and technology transitions across multiple focused verticals: High Purity Silica and Advanced Silica Materials, Solar, Energy Storage, Semiconductors & Photonics, and Energy Solutions. Anchored by a unique high-purity, low-iron silica resource in the Silica Valley of Bahia, Brazil, Homerun is transforming raw silica sand into essential materials, products, and technologies that accelerate clean energy and technology solutions and deliver durable shareholder value.
Silica: Secure supply and processing of high-purity low-iron silica for mission‑critical applications, enabling premium solar glass and advanced energy and technology materials.
Solar: Development of the first dedicated 1,000 tonne per day high‑efficiency solar glass plant in the Americas and the commercialization of extra-clear, antimony‑free solar glass designed for next‑generation photovoltaic performance.
Energy Storage: Advancement of long‑duration, silica‑based thermal storage systems and related technologies to decarbonize industrial heat and unlock grid flexibility.
Semiconductors & Photonics: The processing and purification of raw SME silica sand into tech-grade fused silica, silicon and silicon carbide feedstocks. These feedstocks are designed to support Silicon and Silicon Carbide-on-Insulator (SiCOI) platforms, ultra-low-loss waveguides, and room-temperature quantum spin architectures.
Energy Solutions: AI‑enabled energy management, control systems, and turnkey electrification solutions that reduce costs and optimize renewable generation for commercial and industrial customers.
With disciplined execution, strategic partnerships, and an unwavering commitment to best‑in‑class ESG practices, Homerun is focused on converting milestones into markets—creating a scalable, vertically integrated platform for clean energy and technology solutions in the Americas.
On behalf of the Board of Directors of
Homerun Resources Inc.
“Brian Leeners”
Brian Leeners, CEO & Director
brianleeners@gmail.com / +1 604-862-4184 (WhatsApp)
Tyler Muir, Investor Relations
info@homerunresources.com / +1 306-690-8886 (WhatsApp)
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