Soitec

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Soitec is a French semiconductor manufacturer which is specialised in the production of Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) wafers. Soitec is listed on the Euronext Paris [1], and its headquarters are in Bernin, France.

The company was created in 1992 by two researchers, André Auberton-Hervé and Jean-Michel Lamure from CEA-Léti (one of Europe’s largest microelectronics research institutes) located in Grenoble, France.

Soitec is using the Smart Cut technology instead of the previous SIMOX which is less manufacturable in high volume. The Smart Cut represents about 90% of the SOI market, and Soitec represent about 80% of this Smart Cut market. The other part of the Smart Cut market is done by SEH (Shin Etsu Handotaï) which is licenced since 1997. Siltronic also bought a licence in 2004.

Soitec's clients include AMD, Freescale Semiconductor, Mitsubishi Electric, OKI, IBM Microelectronics, Philips Semiconductors, Sony, Toshiba, and more. They have chosen to develop their major market applications — servers, PCs, watches, automotive sensors, game consoles, HTDV televisions, and like so — on Soitec products.