(ST) and Soitec, a semiconductor materials design and manufacturing company, has announced the next phase of their silicon carbide (SiC) substrate collaboration, with ST completing pre-production certification testing of Soitec’s SiC substrate technology over the next 18 months. The goal of the partnership is for ST to use Soitec’s SmartSiC technology to manufacture future 8-inch silicon carbide substrates, boosting the company’s silicon carbide device and module manufacturing business and enabling volume production in the mid-term.
Silicon carbide (SiC) is a disruptive compound semiconductor material whose inherent properties enable better performance and energy efficiency than silicon-based semiconductors in critical, high-growth power applications in electric vehicles and industrial processes. — all of which are key parameters and elements of successful automotive and industrial systems. Upgrading from 6-inch wafers to 8-inch wafers can almost double the available area for manufacturing integrated circuits, with 1.8-1.9 times the effective yield per wafer prior to the upgrade, resulting in a significant increase in capacity.
SmartSiC is Soitec’s proprietary technology, based on Soitec’s proprietary SmartCut technology, which cuts a thin layer from a high-quality silicon carbide donor wafer and bonds it to the surface of the low-resistance polysilicon wafer to be processed. The result is a substrate with improved chip performance and manufacturing yields. In addition, high-quality silicon carbide donor wafers can be reused multiple times, thus significantly reducing the total energy consumption for donor processing.
