Purdue University and Taiwan’s GeChi Compound Semiconductor Co (GCCS) have signed a five-year partnership to commercialize 8-inch and 12-inch silicon carbide substrates, targeting critical bottlenecks in thermal management, power delivery, and 6G infrastructure.
Strategic alignment and workforce development
The memorandum of understanding establishes GCCS as a materials supplier and Purdue as a research hub, combining GCCS’s crystal growth expertise with Purdue’s semiconductor ecosystem. Joint efforts include collaborative R&D and academic-industry workforce initiatives, with the signing held at Purdue’s Hovde Hall. GCCS chairman Kuan-Ming Hsiung emphasized the partnership’s role in securing domestic supply chain resilience for silicon carbide, a material essential for national tech security.
Technical focus and hardware barriers
Silicon carbide substrates address three key constraints as AI workloads push legacy silicon to its limits. For thermal management, SiC enables advanced micro-channeling in chip-on-wafer and chip-on-panel packaging platforms. In power delivery, it modernizes grid-to-server conversion using high-voltage direct current and solid-state transformers. For 6G, it provides the material efficiency required for next-generation connectivity devices.
Scaling to large-diameter wafers
Joint research will target isolating crystal defects and optimizing growth processes to accelerate high-yield production on 8-inch and 12-inch platforms. This framework aims to translate academic breakthroughs in thermal and material characteristics into high-volume commercial manufacturing. GCCS bridges Taiwan’s semiconductor engineering with scalable U.S. manufacturing infrastructure.
Infrastructure and institutional support
Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center, one of the largest academic cleanroom facilities in the U.S., will serve as the primary research site. The center supports over 140 Purdue research groups and 25 external institutions annually, providing characterization and nanofabrication capabilities. This partnership is part of Purdue Computes, a university-wide initiative spanning computing, AI, quantum science, and semiconductor innovation.
The collaboration represents a decisive step toward domesticating silicon carbide supply chains, directly addressing thermal, power, and connectivity constraints that will define next-generation high-compute infrastructure. By combining academic research with industrial scaling, Purdue and GCCS position themselves to accelerate the transition from 6-inch to 8- and 12-inch wafers, a shift critical for meeting the demands of AI, 6G, and grid modernization.
