General Discussion

I thought it was pertinent to start a general discussion thread for Revasum. It's always helpful for any potential investors doing their due diligence to have plenty of relevant info in the one place.

This is an article written by Gregg Lowe, CEO of WolfSpeed, who have just opened the world’s first 200mm Silicon Carbide wafer fabrication facility in the USA. Encouraging with our focus on SiC wafers. 200mm and below. I'm looking forward to finding out more details on the TOLOSA, the next generation 6EZ SiC polisher upgraded for high-volume production.


Silicon Carbide: Unleashing a New Era of Energy Efficiency

Earlier this week, Wolfspeed officially hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony at our highly anticipated Mohawk Valley Fab, opening the world’s first, largest and only 200mm Silicon Carbide wafer fabrication facility. While this was a big moment for us, it was also part of a larger, once-in-a generation shift in technology: the transition from silicon to Silicon Carbide-based semiconductors across all industries.

Why do we need to transition from silicon to Silicon Carbide?

Our society is becoming more technologically advanced – and technology dependent – with every passing day, with endless opportunities to solve societal challenges, increase our knowledge of the universe or improve our quality of life. But it comes with a cost our environment cannot afford: the traditional silicon chips powering most of that technology will not meet new energy efficiency standards.

In 2021 at least a dozen states passed new clean energy legislation or adopted new energy-saving standards, many of which focused on the electrification of buildings, transportation and entire cities. Just this past December, the EPA strengthened fuel economy standards, requiring passenger vehicles to travel an average of 55 miles per gallon of gasoline by 2026, from just under 38 miles per gallon today. New York and California have passed legislation that will effectively ban sales of new, internal combustion engine cars and trucks by 2035. New standards require a new approach.

Enter Silicon Carbide, a catalyst for some of the fastest-growing markets fueling the Green Recovery and enabling progressive companies to meet aggressive carbon-emission requirements. Data centers, electric cars, 5G infrastructure, renewable energy and storage systems, industrial motors, HVACs and more all use semiconductor chips, and their energy efficiency can be optimized through the adoption of Silicon Carbide.

For example, energy consumption in data centers is expected to soar in the coming decades. Data centers currently account for only three percent of global energy use, but by 2050, they are projected to account for 14% of total consumption. This can be attributed to the growing number of communities with access to connectivity, as well as the number of products and technologies that are interconnected through 5G technology – which, coincidentally, is another use case application for Silicon Carbide.

If the power supplies and cooling systems used in these data centers were powered by Silicon Carbide instead of silicon, the energy savings could power Manhattan for an entire year. Moreover, the stringent energy efficiency standards set by cloud providers are so high that in today’s technology landscape, only a switch to Silicon Carbide can meet those standards.

Simply put, Silicon Carbide saves the world energy.

As companies and organizations make plans to adopt technologies and infrastructure to meet new energy regulation requirements, engineers and designers are realizing the silicon chips won’t cut it. Compared to alternatives, Wolfspeed products sold in 2020 will save approximately 125 million metric tons of CO2 over their lifetimes. That amount of CO2 savings is anticipated to grow year over year as adoption of the technology increases.

How quickly will this transition happen?

The demand for Silicon Carbide is increasing at a faster than anticipated rate, driven in large part by the explosive growth of the electric vehicle market. Electric vehicles use silicon carbide to enable high voltage operation, increased power density, and greater efficiency. These advantages translate to lighter and more spacious vehicle designs at lower cost for automakers while simultaneously delivering longer range and faster charging times for consumers. EVs are just one of Silicon Carbide’s applications, but with global annual sales for electric vehicles expected to soon hit 10 million, it’s a big market and indicative of the demand for silicon carbide devices.

The speed of the transition from silicon to Silicon Carbide is reliant in part on increases in production capacity. With the opening of our Mohawk Valley fab, Wolfspeed’s Silicon Carbide device production capacity will increase dramatically. Beyond just increased manufacturing space and state of the art automation, the move from 150mm wafers to 200mm wafers will provide nearly twice the number of devices per wafer – that may not sound exciting if you’re not in the industry, but the increased size delivers more Watts per wafer. To put it into perspective, 200mm Silicon Carbide wafers deliver more power than a 300mm silicon wafer and, therefore, can power more systems with the same number of wafers. Conversely, it could power the same system with less wafers – decreasing the number of chips purchased and alleviating pressure on the supply chain.

Wolfspeed has committed $1B to grow our operations and effectively create a Silicon Carbide corridor on the East Coast, anchored by the wafer fab in New York and our materials operations in North Carolina. We are investing in our business at rates four times that of our competitors to meet surging customer demand. That is how much we believe in the future of Silicon Carbide.

The opening of our Mohawk Valley fab will unleash new possibilities for a more sustainable future, another important milestone in the paradigm shift from silicon to Silicon Carbide.