On November 12, Siltectra's official website announced that the company was acquired by Infineon, which means that Infineon also mastered the company's Cold Spilt technology. This technology is an efficient processing technology for crystalline materials, and Siltectra claims that it will increase production efficiency by 90% compared to traditional processes. This means that once Infineon will use this technology for dicing SiC wafers, it will double the number of chips that can be produced on a single wafer. It is reported that the acquisition offer is 124 million euros (139 million US dollars / 970 million RMB).
Cold Spilt process introduction:
1. Patented laser technology defines the range of material splitting; 2. Coating the material with a special polymer; 3. Controlling the cooling system to induce stress to accurately split the material; 4. Chemical cleaning of the polymer coating and grinding the substrate
Siltectra currently has an intellectual property portfolio of more than 50 patent families. Compared with the traditional process, the cold cutting technology developed by this startup is a low-loss and high-efficiency crystalline material decomposition technology, and the technology can also be applied to the semiconductor material SiC. Today, SiC products are used in very efficient and compact solar inverters. In the future, SiC will play an increasingly important role in electric vehicles. Cold cutting technology will be industrialized at the Siltectra plant in Germany and the Infineon plant in Austria. The transition to mass production is expected to be completed within the next five years.
Infineon offers the broadest portfolio of silicon-based power semiconductors and innovative substrates for silicon carbide and gallium nitride. It is the only company in the world to mass produce on 300mm wafers. In the long run, cold cutting technology will help ensure the supply of SiC products. In the future, cold cutting technology is expected to be more widely used, such as ingot segmentation or for materials other than SiC.
Regarding the acquisition, Infineon CEO, Dr. Reinhard Ploss said: "This acquisition helps us to take advantage of new SiC materials and expand our excellent product portfolio. Our system understanding and unique expertise in thin wafer technology Will complement Siltectra's innovative capabilities and cold cutting technology. "