IVWorks acquires Saint-Gabain’s GaN wafer business
South Korean GaN epi-wafer startup, IVWorks announces that it has acquired Saint-Gobain’s GaN wafer business as the company looks to strengthen its competitiveness on the EV market.
With the acquisition of the GaN wafer business from Saint-Gobain, IVWorks has acquired technology for mass production of 4- and 6-inch GaN wafers.
GaN epi-wafer is a material comprising multi-stacked III-N compound semiconductor films on a wafer. It is used in high-speed chargers, EV conversion, and defense radars. Silicon carbide- or silicon wafer is used to stack III-N films depending on the application field, but GaN wafers are required in high-power devices such as EV powertrains.
Saint-Gobain designs, manufactures and distributes materials and services for the construction and industrial markets. IVWorks is a South Korean company specialising in semiconductor materials and has successfully mass-produced GaN epi-wafers of 4-, 6-, and 8-inch. The start-up has also recently installed a 12-inch production facility, for the first time in South Korea.
“recently, the use of GaN power devices are increasing significantly in all electronic products due to their advantages in terms of energy efficiency, and interest in GaN is high in the EV applications, a new market area,”. “Based on this acquisition, we will be able to expand our product portfolio by supplying GaN-on-GaN epi-wafers in high-power application fields and compete with SiC materials in the EV market,” says Young-Kyun Noh, CEO of IVWorks in the press release.
No further details regarding the transaction have been made public.
