Recently, three overseas silicon carbide (SiC) wafer projects are advancing in construction, with a total investment exceeding CNY 3 billion and a planned annual capacity of over 80,000 wafers:
SiCSem in India: The project has been approved with a wafer capacity of 60,000 pieces/year and an investment of approximately CNY 2.657 billion.
RIR Power in India: Completed the installation and commissioning of epitaxial equipment. The capacity will reach 20,000 pieces by the end of 2027, with the second phase planning a monthly production of 3,500 pieces.
CEITEC in Brazil: Construction progress is about 50%. It will collaborate with Chinese SiC enterprises and has received subsidies of approximately CNY 287 million.
The progress of these three projects indicates that the global outlook for the long-term prospects of SiC technology remains optimistic, maintaining a high level of attention. For domestic SiC substrate, epitaxy, and equipment enterprises, the construction of these production lines may bring potential cooperation opportunities.
The advancement of SiC projects in India and Brazil is driven by factors such as geopolitics, government subsidies, and local industry support. However, the participating enterprises are relatively limited in scale, and the supporting industrial chain and talent pool are relatively weak. Against the backdrop where leading SiC enterprises in Europe, the US, and Japan are becoming cautious about capacity expansion, with some even turning to cooperate with Chinese SiC wafer fabs for foundry services, whether these SiC wafer production lines in India and Brazil can form competitiveness remains to be further observed.
SiCSem in India: SiC Wafer Line Approved, with Total Investment Exceeding CNY 2.6 Billion
On September 15, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of India officially approved SiCSem to build a SiC wafer manufacturing project in Odisha, covering a land area of approximately 21.889 acres. According to SiCSem's data, the factory's planned wafer capacity is 60,000 pieces/year, and the chip capacity is 96 million pieces/year.
The project plans to invest approximately 34.06 billion Indian Rupees (CNY 2.657 billion); of which, the equipment investment is about CNY 2.345 billion, including approximately CNY 618 million for domestic equipment and CNY 1.727 billion for imported equipment.
In August 2025, the project received financial support arrangements from the Indian government and the Odisha state government: a central support subsidy of CNY 546 million, and previous financial support from Odisha state of CNY 273 million, totaling nearly CNY 820 million in subsidies.
Founded in December 2023 and headquartered in Chennai, India, SiCSem is a semiconductor subsidiary of the Indian chemical enterprise Archean Chemical Industries (ACIL). Archean's consolidated revenue for fiscal year 2026 was approximately CNY 755 million, with a net profit of about CNY 67.9 million.
SiCSem is positioned as a SiC IDM enterprise. Its technology partners include the UK's Clas-SiC Wafer Fab, the US's NoMIS Power, and equipment suppliers such as Aixtron, which provides epitaxial equipment. In September, SiCSem ordered four CLUSTERLINE® 200 systems from the Swiss company Evatec for its front-end wafer manufacturing production line.
RIR Power in India: SiC Equipment Installed, with Total Investment Exceeding CNY 400 Million
On September 16, India's RIR Power Electronics Limited announced that their SiC wafer fab has completed the installation and commissioning of SiC epitaxial MOCVD equipment.
The total investment for RIR Power's SiC wafer fab is 6.18 billion Indian Rupees (approximately CNY 432 million). The overall plan is to gradually establish vertical integration capabilities from SiC epitaxy and wafer manufacturing to packaging. The first phase focuses on building the SiC epitaxial production line, with an expected annual capacity of 20,000 pieces by the end of 2027; the second phase will further build a 6-inch SiC wafer fab, with a planned monthly capacity of 3,500 pieces.
The project was planned in 2023, and the groundbreaking ceremony was held in September 2024. In February 2025, it received customized incentives under the state government's semiconductor policy, bringing the construction into a substantive promotion stage. In 2026, the project completed the cleanroom construction, and installed and commissioned the SiC epitaxial wafer manufacturing reactors along with supporting power and utilities. Trial production is expected to start by the end of 2026.
The predecessor of RIR Power is Ruttonsha. As early as 2021, it laid out and built a SiC epitaxial fab through Visicon Power. At that time, it imported two SiC epitaxial furnaces from Italy's LPE, as well as equipment from Disco, K&S, ASM, and Dage. The total equipment investment cost for the entire fab exceeded USD 5 million (approximately CNY 31.85 million), with a daily capacity of 40 wafers.
RIR Power's SiC technical support comes from SiCamore. In October 2024, RIR signed a SiC technology transfer agreement with SiCamore for approximately CNY 5 million. At this stage, RIR Power mainly conducts SiC wafer tape-out at the SiC wafer fab of Transcend Semiconductor.
Brazilian State-Owned Enterprise: Construction of SiC Wafer Line is Over Halfway Completed
Recently, the SiC wafer production line in Brazil is also accelerating its construction.
On September 17, Homerun Resources announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Brazilian state-owned semiconductor company (CEITEC S.A).
According to the press release, in this cooperation, Homerun will provide SiC substrates and epitaxy for CEITEC S.A, helping Brazil build a more complete local SiC industrial chain.
CEITEC is a wholly state-owned semiconductor company of the Brazilian federal government, established in 2008. Homerun is a high-purity silicon powder and graphite materials company based in Vancouver, Canada.
Let's briefly introduce Homerun's technical features in SiC substrates first, and then focus on CEITEC's SiC wafer line layout.
In terms of SiC substrates, Homerun not only owns subsidiaries for high-purity silicon powder and graphite materials, but also has unique technology in SiC powder synthesis.
The traditional Acheson/induction method for SiC powder synthesis mainly adopts the carbothermal reduction reaction, mixing high-purity quartz sand (SiO₂) with carbon powder and synthesizing the powder at a high temperature of 2000–2500°C. This process usually involves high energy consumption and a long preparation cycle (several days).
In July 2025, Homerun collaborated with the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in the US. The advanced thermal consolidation technology successfully synthesized SiC powder, reducing the preparation time to a few minutes, significantly lowering the energy consumption per batch of powder synthesis, and optimizing the cost.
According to "ASiC", Homerun and UC Davis first used technologies such as Flash Joule Heating (FJH), Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS), and Directed Energy Deposition (DED). By directly and precisely applying laser energy to the raw material particles, extremely fast high-voltage discharge induced a temperature peak of 1700°C to 2200°C within milliseconds to seconds, forcing the silica matrix to be immediately reduced by internal carbon, thereby synthesizing high-purity SiC powder.
Returning to CEITEC's SiC wafer line. As early as October 2025, CEITEC SA began its transformation and launched the renovation of the SiC production line. They hope this move will put Brazil on the map for efficient power device manufacturing.
CEITEC's courage to carry out the SiC project is largely due to the technical commission order signed with the Brazilian Scientific Research Project Funding Agency (Finep) — the total project amount reaches 220 million Brazilian Reais (approximately CNY 287 million). The funds will be allocated over three years for the R&D of SiC power chips.
CEITEC stated at the time that they are promoting a series of foundational construction work internally, including the procurement of a new generation of production equipment specifically for SiC processes, as well as expanding the technical team by introducing eight high-end professional talents.
In August 2026, CEITEC announced the receipt of an ion implanter for the SiC manufacturing process. According to relevant reports, this equipment is said to be the only one of its kind in South America currently. CEITEC stated that the physical construction of the entire SiC wafer line has been completed by about 50%.
While advancing the SiC project construction, CEITEC is also seeking to connect with representatives from European, American, and Asian enterprises to explore cooperation opportunities in technology cooperation, knowledge transfer, and SiC material supply.
According to a report in May 2026 by IT Forum, a leading local tech industry media in Brazil, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI) took the lead in mediating and promoted negotiations between Ceitec and a Chinese SiC IDM enterprise, aiming to carry out SiC semiconductor production in Brazil. This agreement is still in the stage of formal finalization.
CEITEC previously mainly focused on semiconductors, microelectronics, RFID/smart cards, and ASIC chips. The enterprise has cumulatively produced over 245 million semiconductor devices. Its revenue in 2021 was approximately CNY 31.5 million, and it has long relied on financial subsidies. In 2021, the Brazilian government once initiated the liquidation procedure for CEITEC, but the Brazilian Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) subsequently intervened and halted the relevant procedures. CEITEC resumed operations in 2025, and its cumulative revenue from January to September 2025 recovered to approximately CNY 9.1 million.
According to calculations by "ASiC", CEITEC's cumulative revenue is about CNY 100 million, but the cumulative subsidies have exceeded CNY 1.512 billion.
This article is originally published by [ASiC], focusing on industry observations of the third-generation semiconductors (silicon carbide and gallium nitride).