US to award Taiwan’s GlobalWafers up to $400 million to boost US semiconductor wafer production

WASHINGTON :The U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday it deliberate to award Taiwan’s GlobalWafers up to $400 million in govt grants to greatly amplify production of silicon wafers.

The funds for projects in Texas and Missouri would set the predominant U.S. production of 300-mm wafers for progressed semiconductors and amplify production of silicon-on-insulator wafers, the Commerce Department said.

The wafers are a if truth be told fundamental factor of progressed semiconductors and fragment of the Biden administration’s efforts to take the chips present chain.

The deliberate subsidy would enhance $4 billion in deliberate investments by GlobalWafers in both states to assemble contemporary wafer manufacturing facilities and assemble 1,700 construction and 880 manufacturing jobs.

“GlobalWafers will play a if truth be told fundamental unbiased in bolstering The United States’s semiconductor present chain by providing a home source of silicon wafers which could well well be the backbone of progressed chips,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

GlobalWafers Chairwoman and CEO Doris Hsu expressed her thanks for the U.S. govt enhance.

“GlobalWafers is tickled to be a key node within the U.S. semiconductor present chain,” she said in an announcement.

At this time, five essential corporations at the side of GlobalWafers preserve a watch on more than 80 per cent of the area 300mm silicon wafer manufacturing market and about 90 per cent of silicon wafers are produced in east Asia.

Beneath the deliberate subsidy, GlobalWafers plans to mark and amplify facilities in Sherman, Texas, to accumulate wafers old school to contrivance approved, old school-node, and reminiscence chips and a brand contemporary facility in St. Peters, Missouri, for wafers old school for protection and aerospace chips.

GlobalWafers moreover plans to convert a half of its existing silicon epitaxy wafer manufacturing facility in Texas to accumulate silicon carbide epitaxy wafers, that are a key factor for electric autos and orderly vitality infrastructure.

GlobalWafers said in 2022 it might probably well well mark a $5 billion plant in Texas to invent 300-mm silicon wafers old school in semiconductors, switching from a defunct scheme to make investments in Germany amid ongoing geopolitical issues and to “tackle the US semiconductor present chain resiliency factors.”

Congress in 2022 approved the Chips and Science Act to take home semiconductor output with $52.7 billion in study and manufacturing subsidies program.

The most modern award, bask in the 12 others from the chips subsidy program launched totaling up to $30.1 billion, comprise but to be finalized and amounts could well moreover commerce after the Commerce Department conducts due diligence.