Raw Silicon Wafer Maker GlobalWafers Plans $5 Billion Plant In US

GlobalWafers Co., a Taiwan-based technology company, unveiled a plan on Monday to build a $5 billion factory in Sherman, Texas, to manufacture silicon wafers, which is the starting material for most semiconductor chips, (ICs) as per a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Semiconductor fabs (denoted by "manufacturing" in the supply chain picture below) take the starting Silicon wafer (raw wafer as mentioned in the picture below), process them through various steps to create processed wafers from which individual chips are diced out and packaged.

The existing U.S. manufacturing capacity of silicon wafers will be able to supply only 20 per cent of the estimated domestic demand by 2025, and the wafers won’t be suitable for some of the advanced chips planned to be manufactured at the new production facilities currently being built by Intel, TSMC and Samsung Electronics Co., GlobalWafers said.