GlobalWafers wins EU support for 12-inch chip plant in Italy
The company's Italian subsidiary, MEMC Electronic Materials SpA, has received EUR 103 million to establish a production facility for 300mm-diameter wafers in Novara.
Hsinchu-based GlobalWafers announced a project to build an advanced 300mm wafer production facility in February 2022 and originally set a launch date of 2023. The firm is planning to make 200mm and 300mm-diameter silicon on insulator wafers (SOI), 200mm float-zone wafers (FZ), silicon carbide (SiC) wafers (including SiC Epi) and gallium nitride on silicon wafers (GaN on Si).
But the schedule depended on the release of money from the IPCEI-ME/CT (Important Project of Common European Interest in Microelectronics and Communications Technologies). Now that is in place, Taiwan’s GlobalWafers will ramp up the expansion project at its Novara facility in northwest Italy – a facility that already makes 200mm-diameter wafers.
"In this era of economic regionalisation, the European Commission and the Italian government have strategically targeted the most important investments to build resiliency in the European semiconductor and high-tech sectors," said GlobalWafers Chairwoman Doris Hsu. "In this regard, GlobalWafers MEMC's new 300mm Novara fab perfectly fits the European Commission's definition of 'research and development' and 'first industrial deployment' of advanced technology."
