Silicon carbide chip production: preparing for the future
A story of cross-border knowledge exchange
In the past years, the demand for power semiconductors based on silicon carbide (SiC) has skyrocketed. Due to its increased power density, the innovative material enables a greater range and more efficient recharging for electric vehicles, which makes it key to achieving fully electrified mobility. To help meet these high demands, Bosch is ramping up its silicon carbide chip production in both Reutlingen, Germany, and Roseville, California, into specialized wafer fabs for 200mm SiC chips. While first chips are already being produced for customer trials in Reutlingen, a bit more preparation work still needs to be done in Roseville.
From ASICs to silicon carbide chip production
Previously, the Roseville fab produced standard silicon-based application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Now, it is being converted into a state-of-the-art SiC wafer fab. While existing clean rooms can remain, much of the site’s equipment and machinery requires replacing to process the much more demanding silicon carbide chips. Even more importantly, the 250 Roseville-based employees must be trained for their future work.
Cross-border buddy system
To prepare colleagues from Roseville for their work in silicon carbide chip production and to exchange knowledge across sites and borders, an international buddy system has been established: An engineer from the Roseville site is paired with an expert from Reutlingen to shadow their work for several weeks. Among the buddies of the first training period were Allison Suba from Roseville and Tobias Huschitt from Reutlingen. There was much to learn for Allison: from how to mount silicon carbide wafers on frames and processing them in the dicing machine to analyzing the resulting chips for faults. As Tobias said, “we have to make every minute count.” That’s why they spent more than half of their days in the clean room, making sure Allison knows every step and detail of the processes inside-out. “I greatly benefitted from Tobias’s experience – that’s a resource you can’t get anywhere else,” she says. The first SiC chips made in Roseville are set to see the light of day starting in 2027 – courtesy of engineers like Allison and Tobias.
