X-fab is a leading semiconductor foundry in Europe, which produces customized high-voltage power semiconductors for customers. Its business has shifted from consumer business to automotive, industrial and medical markets. Rudi de Winter, CEO, said in an interview with eeNews Europe that despite the economic downturn and chip shortage, the demand for chips will cause the existing capacity to be sold out in the next three years, even if the investment plan was started more than a year ago.

X-fab has six factories in the world, including the factory in Lubbock, Texas, acquired from Texas Instruments, and the factory in Sarawak, Malaysia, acquired from 1st Silicon. X-fab is currently looking for more plants to acquire.

Rudi de Winter pointed out: "The shortage of chips has really changed the industry. People are increasingly concerned about the supply chain and recognize the strategic significance of semiconductors." Our previous business is based on non binding forecasts, so we have no consideration of supply security and business security. There is a lot of demand today, and we have signed many long-term agreements, which are generally three years long and promise to deliver and purchase quantities. As a result, our production has expanded significantly, and the increased products have been sold out. "

Rudi de Winter said, "Business is well distributed. 70% of CMOS business is long-term agreements signed with key customers. According to these agreements and future prospects, we will sell all products in the next three years."

Rudi de Winter believes that the problem lies in the supply of the factory, which is the result of the long lead time of semiconductor equipment.

He said: "We are expanding the scale of all factories and making unprecedented investment. In the next three years, we will support long-term agreements with an investment totaling one billion dollars in advance. What I hope to gain from long-term agreements is to eliminate the huge fluctuations in the semiconductor industry due to long lead times and factory closures."

He pointed out that "the equipment delivery time is still very long, as long as two years, so the factory expansion is a long-term plan, and the capacity increase takes about three years, but we started this plan more than a year ago."

One way to solve this problem is to acquire a wafer factory: "The automotive industry has very strong demand for this, so we are looking for further expansion for a long time. We are looking for a wafer factory that is suitable for producing the new BCD SOI 110 nm HV product that we are developing. Therefore, if we expand, we need a wafer factory that can produce this product, and some 200 mm wafer factories are not suitable."

X-fab is growing and supplying gallium nitride (GaN) for the production of consumer power adapters, but now it is turning to the car charger in the automotive market, which is developing together with silicon carbide (SiC) and silicon on insulator (SOI) technology.

He said: "The automotive field is a very strong development field, and we are very excited about the positioning of X-fab and cars. We pay more attention to integrated high-voltage chips than anyone else in the industry. Starting from high-voltage CMOS, our contact with SiC is forming a closed loop in the past few years."

"Now we focus on CMOS and SOI, which account for 80% of our revenue, but SiC and GaN related businesses are growing," he said, "We have some proprietary customer specific technologies, and we are running these technologies in batches to produce efficient small chargers. We started this cooperation seven years ago, and are currently conducting this cooperation in large quantities - the reactor is provided by the partner, and we start processing after GaN epitaxy."

"We are carrying out prototype design and development for GaN on Si on 200mm wafers, and many customers are involved. We may have the most advanced technology in 200mm, but this technology will be popular in the near future."

These agreements also benefit long-term plans for the automotive and industrial markets. Half of the business is in the automotive field, and 22% of the business is in the industrial field.

Rudi de Winter said: "The consumer market will further shrink from 20% to about 10% in 2022, and the medical and industrial sectors will grow with the actual demand for production capacity, so we don't need to care about this decline."

He pointed out that X-fab had acquired a wafer factory in France, which was engaged in mobile radio frequency (RF) and SOI business. However, the company did not acquire the factory to obtain RF SOI technology, but used the factory to produce more automotive products.
MEMS and optoelectronics are also key areas for enterprise development.

Rudi de Winter said, "Medical MEMS has developed well. One of our advantages is to combine CMOS and MEMS, which has great appeal in the medical field. We are vigorously pursuing this."

"Generally, these products begin to process 200mm wafers in Elford, and then go to Istaso to further process precious metals that are not suitable for production in CMOS wafer factories. Sometimes it is necessary to adjust CMOS to coordinate processing. For customers, it is more effective to optimize all at once than to find different suppliers for different components."

X-fab recently announced a transaction that may become the largest optoelectronic foundry in the future.

"We have implemented their platforms in optoelectronics and commissioned them. I wouldn't be surprised if quantum computing was involved. We provide PDK, and customers design products when we don't know what the products are. The same is true in optoelectronics."

The company has been developing silicon carbide on 150mm wafers, and the Lubbok plant is turning to 200mm wafers.

He said: "We are still interested in long-term rolling agreements. It is not new that we have long-term agreements with wafer suppliers. At present, the supply seems to be no problem."

"Now we are producing 3000 SiC wafers every month, and we are increasing capacity every month. By the end of next year, the output will double, and by the end of 2024, the output will double again - this is our expansion plan." That is, in 2023, we will have more than 6000 wafers, and in 2024, we should have 12000 wafers every month.

Rudi de Winter said: "From 600V to 3.3kV, our output exceeds 90%, but we are making prototypes of higher voltage chips, namely customized devices and customized technologies. Each customer has its own technology, and we can use these technologies."

After planar SiC transistors, X-fab has been studying trench MOSFETs, and is now approaching the final verification stage. "We are excited about the performance of planar MOSFETs, which are not so different from trench FETs. We are closely watching the development of the factory. Everyone is looking for their own road and roadmap."

"It also depends on where the factory is. France has a lot of nuclear power, and Malaysia has a lot of hydropower. We can focus on reducing electricity consumption, but this is a social responsibility, and also depends on whether people want gas. Solar energy can not work around the clock, and can not use solar energy to supply power for the clean room, which is a problem." Rudi de Winter said, "But there are some ways to help optimize the power consumption of the clean room, reducing it by 20% or 30%, so you need a zero CO2 supply around the clock."