When the giant ship of the semiconductor industry advances from 8-inch to 12-inch silicon carbide (SiC), human industrial capability is engaging in a head‑on confrontation with one of the hardest materials in nature.
With a Mohs hardness of 9.2 — second only to diamond — SiC is brittle, high‑value, and extremely challenging to process. Developing 12‑inch SiC grinding equipment has become the toughest nut to crack in the third‑generation semiconductor industry chain.
In the face of this challenge, Siplus Semiconductor is breaking through multiple hurdles — from mechanical processing to automated integration — through a series of systematic innovations, paving a new way for the mass production of large‑size silicon carbide.
Challenge 1: The "rigidity" confrontation of ultra‑hard materials
Breakthrough strategy – Integration of high‑rigidity air spindle and air‑floating chuck table
The primary difficulty in grinding 12‑inch SiC comes from the material's inherent hardness. Traditional grinding equipment often cannot sustain continuous processing when handling large, ultra‑hard wafers due to insufficient spindle rigidity and stability, leading to edge chipping and cracks during grinding. Moreover, moving from 8 to 12 inches, the increase in area multiplies the processing stress geometrically, placing extreme demands on the core spindle system of the equipment.
Siplus solution – Rigid yet gentle, nano‑scale vibration control
Siplus Semiconductor has successfully integrated its self‑developed high‑power, high‑rigidity ultra‑precision air spindle with an air‑floating chuck table in its substrate thinner.
Contact‑free operation: A rigid air film formed by high‑pressure gas allows the spindle to achieve ultra‑high rotational speeds without frictional contact.
Nano‑scale vibration control: Vibration is controlled down to the nanometer level.
Ultimate precision: With this breakthrough, the Total Thickness Variation (TTV) of 12‑inch SiC wafers is stably controlled within 1 μm.
This "rigid yet gentle" design provides sufficient force to remove material while perfectly avoiding wafer damage caused by excessive hard contact.
Challenge 2: The "invisible killer" at the micro level
Breakthrough strategy – Multi‑process coordination and full‑link process integration
In SiC grinding, the most insidious enemy is not macroscopic breakage but microscopic thickness non‑uniformity and subsurface damage. TTV directly determines the focus depth window of subsequent processes. Especially in advanced packaging interposer applications, the SiC substrate must be precisely bonded to the chip base. However, the extreme hardness of SiC makes it difficult for traditional grinding processes to maintain uniform removal over large areas. The accumulation of surface profile deviations across multiple steps — grinding, polishing — becomes an "invisible killer" that limits yield.
Siplus solution – Link‑by‑link breakthrough, intelligent surface profile control
Single‑equipment precision improvement is no longer sufficient. Siplus has moved from "breakthrough at a single point" to "global coordination":
Multi‑dimensional efforts: Full‑scale development from ultra‑high rigidity/stability control of thinning equipment, surface profile control of polishing equipment, and multi‑process surface profile coordination, achieving the key TTV ≤1 μm.
Organic integration: Combining grinding and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technologies organically.
Intelligent control: A multi‑zone pressure intelligent control system effectively suppresses wafer warpage and surface damage during thinning and polishing, laying a solid foundation for the mass production stability of large‑size SiC.
Challenge 3: The dilemma of material loss and surface damage
Breakthrough strategy – Synergy of laser slicing and gradient grinding/polishing processes
A SiC ingot is truly "black gold". The cost of a single 12‑inch substrate is tens of times that of a silicon wafer of the same size. The material loss from traditional wire slicing and the subsurface cracks introduced during grinding are the two major pain points that drive up cost and reduce yield. How to minimize loss while removing material?
Siplus solution – Strong synergy, challenging extreme yield
To address this pain point, Siplus Semiconductor has launched an automated production line integrating laser slicing and grinding, forming an efficient closed‑loop process:
Cost reduction and efficiency increase: Using ultra‑fast laser for non‑destructive lift‑off from the ingot, compared to traditional wire saw slicing, wafer output increases by 27%, material loss decreases by 52%, and energy consumption is reduced by 40%. Total material loss can be reduced by more than 30%!
Damage elimination: For surface damage, a gradient grinding and polishing synergistic process is adopted. A multi‑pass, variable‑parameter strategy gradually releases the internal stress accumulated during ingot growth, greatly reducing subsurface cracks and perfectly meeting the stringent reliability requirements of automotive‑grade chips.
China's leap: from follower to runner‑up
The technological development of 12‑inch SiC grinding equipment is by no means a simple machine upgrade, but a systematic super‑engineering project encompassing ultra‑precision spindles, high‑rigidity structures, stable thermal control, and synergistic process optimization of "laser + grinding + polishing".
With the continuous explosion of downstream demand in new energy vehicles, photovoltaic energy storage and other fields, the breakthrough in 12‑inch equipment marks that China is firmly moving from "following" to "running alongside" — and even "leading" — in the core equipment field of third‑generation semiconductors.
In this charge against physical limits, every precision improvement and every process optimization by Siplus Semiconductor is smoothing the path for the large‑scale application of SiC power devices, and is redefining the boundaries of human industrial capability.