Advancing semiconductor technology, X-FAB Silicon Foundries has reached another important milestone in the establishing of the world’s first semiconductor foundry to support 6-inch silicon carbide (SiC) production. The company, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the PowerAmerica Institute, has just deployed a high temperature implanter at its facility in Lubbock, Texas.
Leveraging its existing, high volume silicon production lines, X-FAB is in the unique position that it can offer the economies of scale needed to encourage widespread adoption of power devices based on SiC substrates. As a result it is fully equipped to present the industry with a responsive, market scalable and cost effective manufacturing capability. X-FAB’s SiC offering also draws on the company’s long standing reputation for serving the most challenging of applications. It has been extensively predicted that the automotive and industrial sectors are going to be responsible for driving SiC uptake, and this is where X-FAB has decades’ worth of valuable insight and experience, delivering numerous key technologies with high degrees of differentiation.
“Through the installation and qualification of this high temperature implanter we are now ready to support our SiC customers as they move from prototyping to volume production in 2017. This means that they will be right at the forefront of the transition of SiC to 6-inch wafers,” states Andy Wilson, X-FAB Texas’ Director of Strategic Business Development. “The ongoing backing of the DOE and PowerAmerica has proved instrumental in getting us to this next stage, helping X-FAB to make a major impact in relation to this exciting new technology and ensuring that its potential is fully realized.”
About X-FAB
X-FAB is the leading analog/mixed-signal and MEMS foundry group manufacturing silicon wafers for automotive, industrial, consumer, medical and other applications. Its customers worldwide benefit from the highest quality standards, manufacturing excellence and innovative solutions by using X-FAB’s modular CMOS processes in geometries ranging from 1.0 to 0.13 µm, and its special BCD, SOI and MEMS long-lifetime processes. X-FAB’s analog-digital integrated circuits (mixed-signal ICs), sensors and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) are manufactured at six production facilities in Germany, France, Malaysia and the U.S. X-FAB employs approximately 3,800 people worldwide. For more information, please visit www.xfab.com.