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Infineon said on Nov. 9 it processed 300 mm silicon carbide wafers into working power devices in Villach, Austria, but gave no ramp date, yield or customer.
Chips & Power DeskEdited by Ege Erten
3 min readAI-assisted
Infineon press image of two wafer display pieces of different sizes. It illustrates wafer size and is not a production wafer.
Image: Infineon
Source · Press image from the Infineon newsroom, used for news reporting.
Infineon Technologies said on Nov. 9, 2026 that it has processed 300 mm silicon carbide (SiC) wafers into functional power devices at its fab in Villach, Austria, and that each 300 mm wafer offers 2.3 times more chips than a 200 mm one, by its count.
The company said it is the first to do this in a full-scale semiconductor fab, and that it used existing silicon manufacturing equipment to get there. CEO Jochen Hanebeck called it progress in bringing 300 mm SiC "out of the lab" into a manufacturing environment, according to Infineon's press release. Semiconductor Today carried the same account on the day. The "first" covers processed devices: Wolfspeed said on Jan. 13, 2026 that it had produced a single-crystal 300 mm SiC wafer, a crystal milestone without devices.
The 2.3x figure is Infineon's own claim about wafer geometry: chips per wafer against 200 mm. It is not a cost, a yield or a price, and the release gives none of those. For buyers of power semiconductors, the open question is whether the extra dies per wafer turn into cheaper parts once a line runs at volume.
Infineon says SiC's material properties allow lower power loss, higher power density and operation at high voltages and temperatures. Infineon's release lists traction inverters, on-board chargers, EV chargers, large-scale energy storage, industrial drives and uninterruptible power supplies as uses. It also says demand is rising in AI data centers, where it sees new roles for SiC in solid-state transformers, circuit breakers and power supply units. Infineon sells these through its CoolSiC portfolio.
That puts the milestone next to the company's gallium nitride work for the same racks. As Voltgrid News reported, Infineon will supply Enphase with 900 V GaN switches for data-center solid-state transformers. SiC and GaN are both wide-bandgap materials, and Infineon is now showing 300 mm work on both.
In parallel, Infineon said it has shown that its Cold Split technology works on 300 mm SiC at its Dresden site in Germany. Cold Split separates wafers from a SiC boule with less material loss and substantially reduced processing time compared with conventional wire sawing, the company said, so more wafers come from the same crystal with less capital spending. The release gives no figures for the saving.
The release ties the news to the €1.1 billion investment Infineon announced on Oct. 27 for high-volume 300 mm GaN production in Villach. Voltgrid News covered that plan, which targets production by the end of 2027. Infineon says the SiC result extends the same approach to a second wide-bandgap material. It will keep executing its 200 mm SiC roadmap in the meantime.
Power chips are cut from a round wafer, so a wider wafer holds more chips and spreads each processing step across them.
The step is a process result, not a product. Wolfspeed's fiscal 2026 10-K describes a completed move to 200 mm substrates. Infineon's wafers carry working devices made on existing silicon tools, but with no ramp date, cheaper SiC supply for data-center power remains a prospect.
Infineon did not give a ramp date, a wafer volume, device voltage classes, yields or a named customer. It said it will plan the 300 mm SiC technology and the timing of the ramp together with customers and partners. This is a process-feasibility result, not the start of volume production, and the release does not say otherwise.
The first processed 300 mm SiC wafer will be on show at electronica in Munich, Hall C3, booth 502, from Nov. 10 to 13. Watch there and in later Infineon statements for a production date and for any customer commitment.
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