10:50 – 11:10
A foundry perspective on Wide Bandgap semiconductors
Wide bandgap semiconductors such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors have emerged as crucial materials for advancing energy efficiency, particularly in the transportation sector. Beside integrated device manufacturers (IDM), foundries play an important role in the necessary upscaling of SiC and GaN manufacturing and in enabling access for fabless and fab-lite companies. The presentation will provide an overview of X-FAB as a leading foundry for automotive, industrial and medical applications and of the power electronics market from a foundry perspective, with specific focus on SiC and GaN. Beside the advantages of SiC and GaN for achieving power efficiency and and carbon neutrality goals, the presentation will also cover the challenges associated with integration SiC and GaN manufacturing into a CMOS manufacturing process. Finally, the presentation will conclude with an outlook of X-FAB’s technology- and manufacturing strategy for wide bandgap semiconductors.
David Auffret
X-FAB
David Auffret is the Product Marketing Manager for Automotive at X-FAB, the leading analog/mixed-signal and MEMS foundry group. David joined X-FAB in 2020, by taking over responsibility for the RF technologies and recently the Automotive market. He holds responsibilities of strategic development, product roadmap and portfolio management, business development and branding of X-FAB’s Automotive portfolio. Prior to this role, David held various engineering, customer support and product management positions in the RF cellular semiconductor (fabless) as well as Automotive industries (Tier 1s). David received his Master’s Degree in Electronics Engineering in 2007 from Brest National School of Engineering (France).
Company Profile
X-FAB is one of the world’s leading specialty foundry groups for analog/mixed-signal semiconductor technologies with a clear focus on automotive, industrial, and medical applications. As a pure-play foundry, X-FAB provides manufacturing and design support services to customers that design analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) and other semiconductor devices for use in their own products or the products of their customers. Its customers worldwide benefit from the highest quality standards, manufacturing excellence and innovative solutions by using X-FAB’s modular CMOS and SOI processes in geometries ranging from 1.0 µm to 110 nm, and its special micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) processes. X-FAB is also the first pure-play foundry to provide comprehensive processing technologies for the wide-bandgap materials silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN). The GaN-on-Si wafers are manufactured in its modern 8” fab in Dresden, Germany, and SiC wafers in the 6” fab in Lubbock, Texas, USA. X-FAB runs six production facilities in Germany, France, Malaysia and the U.S. The company employs about 4,200 people worldwide.
