The investment, Cree's largest to date, will power Wolfspeed's SiC SiC and gan-on-sic SiC gallium nitride businesses. Upon completion in 2024, these plants will significantly enhance the company's SiC material properties and wafer manufacturing capabilities, enabling wide-bandgap semiconductor material solutions to bring significant technological shifts to the automotive, communications, and industrial markets.
Mr Gregg Lowe, chief executive of Cree, said: "we continue to see significant benefits from the use of SiC SiC to drive innovation in the automotive and communications sectors. However, the current supply is far from meeting our demand for SiC SiC. Today, we announced our largest investment yet in manufacturing, which will dramatically increase supply and help customers deliver transformative products and services to the market. This huge investment in equipment, in infrastructure, in the company's people, will allow us to significantly expand capacity. Compared to the first quarter of fy2017, which was the first stage when we started to expand capacity, we were able to deliver a 30-fold increase in SiC wafer manufacturing capacity and a 30-fold increase in material production. "We believe this will enable us to meet Wolfspeed's projected growth in SiC SiC materials and devices over the next five years and beyond.
The project will add capacity to the leading Wolfspeed SiC SiC SiC business. Taking the first step toward meeting anticipated market demand by adding to the existing building facilities as a 253,000-square-foot 200mm power and RF wafer manufacturing facility. The new North Fab will be designed to fully meet automotive certification requirements and will provide 18 times the surface area of today's wafers, starting with 150mm wafers. The company will transform its existing production and materials plant in durham into a superplant for materials.Mr Gregg Lowe, chief executive of Cree, also said: "these SiC SiC manufacturing superplants will accelerate innovation in today's fastest growing markets. By providing solutions to help increase EV range and reduce charging time, while supporting the deployment of 5G networks around the world. We believe this represents the largest capital investment ever in SiC SiC and GaN GaN technology and manufacturing, and a financially responsible approach. By using existing plants and installing most of the new tooling, we believe we can deliver the most advanced 200mm fab at about one-third the cost of a new fab.
The expanded park will create high-tech jobs and provide advanced manufacturing talent development programs. Cree plans training programs with state, local, and four-year colleges to provide a talent pool for the long-term, high-end jobs and growth opportunities that the new plant will bring.
