Soitec, a leader in designing and manufacturing semiconductor materials for the electronics industry, is launching a pilot line to produce fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) wafers in its Singapore wafer fab. This is the first stage in beginning FD-SOI production in Singapore and providing multi-site FD-SOI substrate sourcing to the global semiconductor market.
"Our decision to launch this FD-SOI line in Singapore as well as the decision we already made to ramp up our FD-SOI production in France are based on direct customer demand," said Paul Boudre, CEO of Soitec. "These are very important milestones for Soitec and the expanding FD-SOI ecosystem. In Singapore, we plan to get full qualification at the customer level in the first half of 2019 and then increase capacity in line with market commitment."
The FD-SOI ecosystem continues to strengthen and the use of FD-SOI technology is progressing. Multiple foundries, IDMs and fabless customers are engaged with a growing number of FD-SOI tape-outs and wafer starts. FD-SOI offers a unique value proposition for low-power applications, which makes it well suited for rapidly growing electronic market segments such as mobile processing, IoT, automotive and industrial.
Soitec reports that its investment in Singapore to launch its FD-SOI pilot line is approximately US$40 million, to be spent over a 24-month period.