On September 17, Infineon announced the official start-up of its 300mm thin wafer power semiconductor chip factory in Ferraher, Austria. Prior to this, the new plant was put into production in early August, three months ahead of schedule.
According to Galaxy Automotive, with a total investment of 1.6 billion euros, it is one of the largest projects of its kind in the field of microelectronics in Europe and one of the most modern semiconductor device factories. The first batch of wafers from the new factory will be shipped this week. The chip is manufactured on a 300mm thin wafer, which is only 40 microns thick, thinner than a human hair.
In the first phase of capacity expansion, the chips will be mainly used to meet the needs of the automotive industry, data centers, and renewable energy generation areas such as solar and wind energy. At the company level, the new plant is expected to increase Infineon's sales of about 2 billion euros a year.
With a view to achieving long-term profitable growth through efficiency and emission reduction, Infineon announced as early as 2018 a new chip factory for the production of power semiconductor devices (energy-efficient chips). Dr. Reinhard Ploss, CEO of Infineon, said that the new factory is another important milestone in the history of Infineon's development. Due to the growing global demand for power semiconductor devices, now is the best time to add new production capacity, and the market situation in the past few months has made it clear that microelectronic technology is very important. the new capacity will help Infineon better provide long-term quality services to customers around the world.
In the future, semiconductors produced by the Ferraher plant will be used in a variety of applications to serve the growing market demand for power semiconductors in electric vehicles, data centers, and solar and wind energy. In terms of figures, the planned annual production capacity of industrial semiconductors will be able to meet the needs of solar systems with a total electricity generation of about 1500 TWh, which is about three times the annual electricity consumption of Germany.
Jochen Hanebeck, a member of Infineon's management board and chief operating officer, said Infineon now has two large 300mm thin wafer factories for the production of power semiconductors, one in Dresden and the other in Ferrahe. The two plants are based on the same concept of standardized production and digitization, so Infineon is able to quickly adjust the output of different products between the two plants, thus responding more quickly to customer needs. The two factories are essentially "integrated" into the same giant virtual factory, becoming a new benchmark set by Infineon in the 300mm manufacturing field, which can further improve resource and energy efficiency and optimize the environmental footprint.
