Hi,
When you have a look at today's list of recommended articles from Electronic Design, you're going to be wondering why a wafer is the lede article. I can explain.
High Power Automotive applications have seen a change over the years in the power devices that are found in such EV building blocks as traction inverters, DC-DC converters, and vehicle chargers.
We've gone from silicon HBT devices to most commonly SiC MOSFETS in an effort to increase efficiency in order to maximize range for a given amount of battery, or even reduce vehicle weight by reducing the amount of battery mass for the same amount of range. SiC is a bit more expensive, with the number of steps to produce a device in the fab being more or less constant. This means the only way to decrease cost in the fab is to produce more devices during a given step - increase the wafer area. Infineon is on a path to do that as they mover from 200mm (8-inch) to 300mm (12-inch) wafers, enabling over twice the number of devices to be produced per move in the fab. This means significantly reduced cost, or increased capacity, to produce devices for automotive, aerospace, and other mobility applications.
With a material as exotic as SiC, every bit of material being produced in a log (called a "boule") at the outset had to be traditionally sawn to produce each wafer. This was both time consuming as well as resulted in specially oriented material lattices being turned into sawdust because the saw has a blade width (known as kerf). Well, the folks at Infineon have figured out how to get more wafers out of that log two ways - make that log larger in diameter, which makes it more fragile during cutting, and eliminating that pesky saw kerf and seeing potential wafers being turned to dust. More on this one, below.
There's also one of the largest electronics industry tradeshows of the year going on, starting today and running through to the 13th, in Munich Germany - "electronica 2026." Many products and technologies are being exhibited at this show, so we've got Alix Paltre attending, while the rest of us provide coverage remotely.
A couple of electronica 2026 things were already written up this past weekend by yours truly, one being the SiC wafer press release, as well as a new 50-200MHz scope family with AI connectivity that's being announced by Tektronix. They're in town for me, so I invited myself over to meet up in person and chat with their folks. We'll likely have some raw video of the scope demo from the show, so I'll add that to the scope article later in the week. We'll be collecting all of the electronica 2026 related articles and product coverage onto a dedicated page that I've linked, below - that page will be updated as we process articles and videos over the coming days and weeks.
Other interesting stuff in this edition as well, including some oscilloscope materials from our archives that includes our very first Ideas for Design article from 71 years ago.
I've been busy writing the two electronica 2026 articles up and through the weekend, as well as that smartwatch/fitness-tracker article at the end of last week, so the From Around the Web entries didn't make it.
enjoy,
-andyT
