IN Brief:
- Axiro is the lead investor in ThinSiC’s latest financing round and has signed a long-term commercial partnership.
- ThinSiC is developing lateral epitaxy and substrate-reuse processes for high-voltage silicon carbide power devices.
- The companies identify rail traction, industrial drives, and power infrastructure among their target applications.
Axiro Semiconductor has invested in US semiconductor developer ThinSiC as lead investor in its latest financing round and entered a long-term commercial partnership focused on silicon carbide power devices. The Bengaluru-based company, wholly owned by India’s CG Power and Industrial Solutions, intends to support the development and commercialisation of ThinSiC’s high-voltage technology for industrial and infrastructure applications.
The agreement extends Axiro’s activities beyond its established radio-frequency, millimetre-wave, and connectivity component portfolio. ThinSiC, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is developing a different approach to silicon carbide device fabrication, with the aim of reducing the material costs associated with power semiconductor production. The companies identify rail traction, industrial motor drives, power transmission, and grid infrastructure as prospective markets.
Silicon carbide is used where semiconductor switches must withstand substantial voltage while converting electrical power efficiently. Its wide-bandgap material properties allow power devices to operate at higher electric fields than conventional silicon, while the design of the converter determines the resulting switching losses, cooling requirements, and electromagnetic behaviour. In a traction inverter or industrial variable-speed drive, such devices control the transfer of energy between a DC supply and an alternating-current motor.
Producing such switches starts with costly silicon carbide crystal growth and wafer preparation, followed by epitaxial deposition of the active layers. Crystal defects can limit device yield, and subsequent patterning, contact formation, packaging, and high-voltage testing add manufacturing cost. Reusing part of the original wafer would address material consumption before those later processing and qualification stages begin.
ThinSiC uses lateral epitaxy to grow a device layer that it says has a lower defect density, then separates that thin layer from the supporting substrate. The company says the approach can allow the substrate to be reused up to ten times. The stated figure describes its technology rather than a demonstrated production yield or qualification record; the achievable reuse rate in manufacturing will depend on successive growth and separation cycles and the electrical quality of the resulting layers.
A separated thin device layer also changes the thermal and electrical packaging problem. ThinSiC presents its structures as a means of reducing switching losses and improving heat flow, but the installed converter still depends on device topology, gate drive, interconnect inductance, insulation, and cooling. High-voltage switching devices must be assessed across realistic junction temperatures, transient loads, and switching conditions before the claimed fabrication benefits can be translated into system performance.
Axiro brings semiconductor product-development and commercial expertise alongside the industrial reach of the wider CG Power group. CG Power works across electrical equipment and industrial infrastructure, connecting the prospective devices to markets where converter reliability, service life, and electrical insulation requirements shape technology selection. A component designed for a rail converter may need a substantially different qualification programme from a switch used in stationary energy conversion, even where both belong to the same SiC family.
Axiro’s existing radio-frequency and connectivity components address different circuit functions from high-voltage power switching. The ThinSiC relationship therefore opens a separate development track rather than extending the ratings of Axiro’s present RF catalogue. Industrial customers would assess the new switches against established SiC alternatives using conduction and switching losses, safe operating limits, package dimensions, and insulation performance under their intended duty cycles.
Device qualification also requires reproducible electrical measurements, endurance testing, and a manufacturing process capable of supplying consistent wafers and packaged components. Rail traction places substantial emphasis on lifetime performance across thermal cycling and electrical transients; stationary power conversion can impose different cooling and continuous-load requirements. These distinctions will shape which applications can adopt ThinSiC devices as individual products progress from process development to validation.
Under the 29 October investment and commercial agreement, Axiro will support development and market access for ThinSiC’s lateral-epitaxy silicon carbide technology. The partnership establishes a route towards rail, industrial drive, and grid power applications, while device ratings, production volumes, and qualification milestones remain future steps. The next substantive engineering evidence will be the performance and reliability of specified devices made through the proposed substrate-reuse process.
