External cylindrical grinding center BOULEPRO 200

internal cylindricalCNC

Currently the only machine of its kind, the BoulePro 200 allows for a much faster and cost-effective boule-to-puck conversion to meet the high demand for Silicon Carbide (SiC), a crucial semiconductor material. With its Single-Step Dual-plane Compensation (SSDC) capability, the BoulePro 200 takes what has traditionally been a multistage process performed on several machines and converts the process into a single-machine operation to dramatically improve efficiency and costs at every step. Silicon Carbide is a semi-conducting or semi-insulating material used in many different types of electronic devices such as diodes, MOSFETS, JFETS, etc. It is replacing Silicon based devices for applications that require high power density, high frequency, and high voltage applications Electric Vehicles (EVs) and 5G are a major user of these types of devices Silicon Carbide is grown via a Physical Vapor Transport (PVT) process in high temperature furnaces and it takes 2-4 weeks to grow a crystal (boule) that is only a few kilograms in size The crystal then needs to be shaped into a wafer ready puck and then sliced into wafers for device makers to build on It is this post growth processing step taking the as grown boule to a wafer ready puck for which Hardinge has developed an innovative solution The BoulePro 200 offers an avenue for SiC manufacturers to streamline their boule fabrication process in order to meet the accelerating demand for high quality and lower cost SiC. Most producers are expanding as quickly as they can to meet this downstream demand and require a means to optimize all aspects of their SiC production facility.