Wolfspeed Adds Premium 200 mm SiC Substrate

What it means for hiring

Wolfspeed has released a premium 200 mm n-type silicon carbide substrate with fewer than 0.01 micropipes per square centimetre, which it says means fewer than three per wafer, along with lower threading screw dislocations and better wafer shape stability, validated by X-ray topography. It is aimed at higher-voltage devices and larger dies, where defects cost the most yield, and customers can use it without changing their epitaxy process. It is orderable now, and Wolfspeed has been running 200 mm silicon carbide production since 2022.

The announcements this fortnight, from 800 V data centre power to 10 kV defence devices, all need bigger, higher-voltage silicon carbide dies, and a larger die is only economic if the wafer has fewer defects. Substrate quality is now a competitive point, which raises the value of crystal growth, wafer processing and metrology engineers, a specialised group that very few companies outside Wolfspeed, Coherent, SK Siltron, onsemi and the Chinese suppliers employ. Device makers moving to 200 mm will also need yield and failure analysis engineers who can tell a substrate defect from a process one. Those are some of the hardest silicon carbide roles to fill in Europe.

Read the original at eeNews Europe .