onsemi Wins Award for Innovation in Manufacturing

onsemi has been named ‘Innovative Company of the Zlín Region.’ The company’s Roznov location won the award presented by the Technological Innovation Center for the project titled “Innova-tion of the manufacturing process of semiconductor wafers with implementation of world-new processes for polished silicon carbide (SiC) wafer manufacturing.”

The SiC-based project’s goal was to achieve world-class quality in the manufacture of SiC wafers within only three years. After extensive evaluation and testing, SiC wafers from the Rožnov facility were qualified for semiconductor device manufacturing at the end of 2020. Production ramp-up began in early 2021 and in September 2021, the onsemi Rožnov facility joined the exclusive club of 200 mm SiC wafer producers.

“We are honored to have won this award as it reflects several years of hard work by our team at the Rožnov facility,” said Aleš Cáb, vice president, onsemi Rožnov operations. “And we are proud that our technologies make a significant positive contribution to the environment and improve peo-ple’s lives.”

SiC is an important technology that allows power electronic circuits to operate more efficiently and in more rugged environments than the long-established silicon devices that it replaces. This contributes to smaller size, lower operating costs – especially in important application areas such as electric vehicles (EV) and renewable energy – and with that re-duces environmental impact of gas emissions.

onsemi in Rožnov stands in the long local tradition of manufacturing semiconductors, which start-ed in 1949. The first silicon single crystal was manufactured in Rožnov in 1958, about eight years after the first world-wide silicon single crystal growth. Today, onsemi’s high-volume wafer fab and raw silicon wafer and epitaxy production factory as well as its design center in Rožnov con-tribute to an effective semiconductor supply chain.