Anyone know why it took so long for them to transition to 300mm? As mentioned in the article, they're mainly using existing 300mm equipment designed for silicon, which transitioned years ago. I imagine some process steps are different (mainly growing to larger boule, but probably others), but it doesn't seem like they would be huge blockers.
Infineon marks innovation milestone with world’s first 300-millimeter power silicon carbide (SiC) wafer
PBusiness & Financial Press
Nov 09, 2026
Infineon presents industry-first functional power devices processed on 300-millimeter silicon carbide wafers
Technological breakthrough underlines Infineon’s innovation strength and leadership in power semiconductors and wide-bandgap technologies
300-millimeter SiC process feasibility lays the foundation for secure, future-proof SiC supply to customers in automotive, renewable energy, industrial and AI data center applications
Infineon will present the first processed 300-millimeter SiC wafer to the public at the electronica trade show starting 10 November 2026 in Munich
European investors and governments are risk averse. DRAM is one of the riskiest silicon products. They talk a lot about independence but European governments lack the raw investment power and willpower to make decade-long investments that are guaranteed to lose money in the next decade as DRAM. If Europe wants DRAM made in European soil, the governments and people should be ready for losing tens to hundreds of billions of taxpayer money.
When Korean and American factories ramp up, the price will plummet. Basically whatever business will not make a single Euro profit for years.
European silicon manufacturers target industrial and automotive for a reason. They want large, guaranteed contracts for older silicon nodes which are cheap and profitable. They let the US, China and Taiwan to take risk of developing new ones. When they do research, they prefer incremental ones.
When it comes to real talk Europe doesn't really care about independence more than it cares about capital and profits. Only an actual war will make the governments care and it will be too late. Without a strong drive to create one's own nuclear arsenal, don't expect any groundbreaking risky investment out Europe.
Different kind of applications. GaN has no reverse recovery at all and a way smaller gate source capacity and threshold voltage so you can crank up the frequency higher.
But GaN conducts heat worse and also anything that can withstand more than 650V becomes a huge die due to no vertical mosfet tech in GaN yet.
SiC is more or less like super Silicon, almost negligible reverse recovery, very fast switching, way smaller gate charge and a 1200V 1700V is economical and very performant.
For high power like 10s-100s of kW SiC is the best. Higher than that passive components become so big you don't need as high a frequency so you would go with Si IGBTs, lower than that GaN allows you to increase frequency by a lot and reduce passive components size AND in a lot of cases total losses.
So yeah, don't expect to see GaN in a car power train and SiC in a server power supply.
There is an overlap between SiC and GaN at rated voltages between 600 V and 750 V, but at lower voltages than that only GaN devices are used and at higher voltages than that only SiC devices are used.
Even at 650 V where there are available both GaN and SiC devices, there is little direct competition between them. For such voltages, SiC devices are used for controlling greater powers, where also the power dissipated by the device is great enough to require a big package that enables efficient cooling, while the pure GaN devices (i.e. not the hybrid silicon-GaN cascode transistors) are available only in small surface mounted packages, which enable much higher switching frequencies, but at lower output powers, because it is more difficult to cool them well enough.
Infineon marks innovation milestone with world’s first 300-millimeter power silicon carbide (SiC) wafer
PBusiness & Financial Press Nov 09, 2026
Infineon presents industry-first functional power devices processed on 300-millimeter silicon carbide wafers
Technological breakthrough underlines Infineon’s innovation strength and leadership in power semiconductors and wide-bandgap technologies
300-millimeter SiC process feasibility lays the foundation for secure, future-proof SiC supply to customers in automotive, renewable energy, industrial and AI data center applications
Infineon will present the first processed 300-millimeter SiC wafer to the public at the electronica trade show starting 10 November 2026 in Munich
When Korean and American factories ramp up, the price will plummet. Basically whatever business will not make a single Euro profit for years.
European silicon manufacturers target industrial and automotive for a reason. They want large, guaranteed contracts for older silicon nodes which are cheap and profitable. They let the US, China and Taiwan to take risk of developing new ones. When they do research, they prefer incremental ones.
When it comes to real talk Europe doesn't really care about independence more than it cares about capital and profits. Only an actual war will make the governments care and it will be too late. Without a strong drive to create one's own nuclear arsenal, don't expect any groundbreaking risky investment out Europe.
The primary players are South Korea, Taiwan, the US, and China and most of their capex in the space is in Asia and the US.
But GaN conducts heat worse and also anything that can withstand more than 650V becomes a huge die due to no vertical mosfet tech in GaN yet.
SiC is more or less like super Silicon, almost negligible reverse recovery, very fast switching, way smaller gate charge and a 1200V 1700V is economical and very performant.
For high power like 10s-100s of kW SiC is the best. Higher than that passive components become so big you don't need as high a frequency so you would go with Si IGBTs, lower than that GaN allows you to increase frequency by a lot and reduce passive components size AND in a lot of cases total losses.
So yeah, don't expect to see GaN in a car power train and SiC in a server power supply.
Even at 650 V where there are available both GaN and SiC devices, there is little direct competition between them. For such voltages, SiC devices are used for controlling greater powers, where also the power dissipated by the device is great enough to require a big package that enables efficient cooling, while the pure GaN devices (i.e. not the hybrid silicon-GaN cascode transistors) are available only in small surface mounted packages, which enable much higher switching frequencies, but at lower output powers, because it is more difficult to cool them well enough.
You can likely live without a new gaming rig. You likely cannot live without replaceable parts for trucks and cars.