Infineon secures 200mm SiC wafer supply deal with Wolfspeed

What it means for hiring

Infineon has signed a multi-year agreement with Wolfspeed for 200 mm silicon carbide wafers, moving an existing supply arrangement from 150 mm up to 200 mm substrates. The two companies have worked together for twenty years, and the deal is about securing larger-diameter capacity as Infineon shifts its silicon carbide manufacturing to the bigger wafer size.

The jump from 150 mm to 200 mm is not a scaling exercise, it is a different process. Crystal growth, epitaxy, wafer handling, breakage rates and yield all change, and the people who have actually run a 200 mm silicon carbide line rather than a silicon one are a very short list worldwide. Device makers moving to the larger wafer are hiring the same process and yield engineers, usually out of the same handful of fabs, and a multi-year supply contract of this size also needs commercial people who can hold a strategic materials agreement together. That second group is easy to underestimate and hard to replace.

Read the original at eeNews Europe .