Soitec and Shin-Etsu Handotai to cooperate

The new partnership includes an extended 10-year licensing agreement between the two companies and establishes a new level of joint technology cooperation. It will facilitate the development and wafer supply of Silicon on Insulator (SOI) wafers to meet major market opportunities such as SOI for RF devices, FinFETs on SOI and Fully Depleted (FD) planar circuits. "We are very excited about the business opportunities for SOI products, and we look forward to working with Soitec to extend the global supply chain for new products, such as FD-SOI and SOI for FinFETs, which are showing potential benefits in mobile and embedded applications," said Nobuo Katsuoka, SEH director, SOI process engineering department . "Our relationship with Soitec has been a very positive and fruitful one, and we are excited to extend that collaboration. The unique features of Smart Cut will enable our two companies to jointly improve global output for existing and new SOI products." "We are thrilled to extend our partnership with SEH," said Paul Boudre, COO of Soitec. "We have worked side by side with SEH for more than 15 years, and together we have established Smart Cut as the industry standard for manufacturing SOI. As we continue to work together, we look forward to manufacturing new products such as planar FD-SOI and SOI for FinFETs. It is a critical time in the electronics industry, and there is an increasing need for new and innovative wafer materials that extend the performance and energy efficiency of consumer devices we all use every day. Together, Soitec and SEH will be providing the industry with the leading materials it needs to continue to innovate."