X-Fab starts silicon carbide foundry service from Texas

The 150mm wafers, called ‘SmartSiC’, are made from a thin layer of mono-crystalline SiC, cut from a thick SiC donor wafer, bonded to a low-resistivity polycrystalline siclicon carbide ‘handle’ wafer – up to 10 thin mono-crystalline wafers can be cut from each donor wafer.

“The resulting substrate offers improved device performance and manufacturing yields,” claims Soitec. “This collaboration follows the completion of the assessment phase, during which SiC power devices were manufactured at X-Fab Texas.”

“We want to provide our customers opportunities to design SiC devices for electric vehicles, renewable power and industrial applications,” said X-Fab v-p of procurement Sophie Le-Guyadec. “To offer the most advanced silicon carbide manufacturing capabilities, we agreed to provide our customers easy access to Soitec’s SmartSiC via a consignment model.”

Soitec is ramping production of the substrates at its new plant near Grenoble.