Government Approves Four Semiconductor Projects Worth Rs 4,600 Crore

The Union Cabinet approved on Tuesday four new semiconductor projects in Odisha, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh worth Rs 4,594 crore.

With these four additional approvals, the total approved projects under India Semiconductor Mission has reached 10, with cumulative investments of around Rs 1.6 lakh crore in six states, Union Minister of Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a briefing.

Employment generated under the four projects together is expected to be around 2,034 skilled professionals.

With these, Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar will see a compound semiconductor and an advanced packaging unit. Mohali will see its its CDIL facility expand and Andhra Pradesh is set to be home to its first semiconductor manufacturing unit.

The government has approved an investment of Rs 2,066 crore to build a facility of Silicon Carbide based compound semiconductor plant in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. SicSem Pvt. is collaborating with Clas-SiC Wafer Fab Ltd., UK for this project. This will be first commercial compound fab in the country.

The project proposes to manufacture Silicon Carbide devices. This compound semiconductor fab will have an annual capacity of 60,000 wafers and packaging capacity of 96 million units, the government said on Tuesday.

The products will have applications in missiles, defence equipment, electric vehicles, fast chargers, data centre racks, consumer appliances, and solar power inverters.

The second project in Bhubaneswar will be a vertically integrated advanced packaging and embedded glass substrate unit. The project worth Rs 1,943 crore will receive investment from Intel, venture capital funds, Lockheed Martin and several other private equity funds.

This unit will bring advanced packaging technology to India. According to the Cabinet, this will enable next generation efficiency in the semiconductor industry. The facility will have a large variety of advanced technologies including glass interposers with passives and silicon bridges, and 3D heterogeneous integration modules.

Planned capacity of this unit will be approximately 69,600 glass panel substrates, 50 million assembled units, and 13,200 3DHI modules per annum. The proposed products will have significant applications in defence, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, RF and automotive, photonics and co-packaged optics etc.

Among other projects approved by the Cabinet is chip plant in Mohali that will be built by Continental Device India Pvt. The project is expected to cost Rs 117 crore with investment also coming in from Korean firms.

The proposed facility will manufacture high-power discrete semiconductor devices such as MOSFETs, IGBTs, Schottky Bypass Diodes, and transistors, both in Silicon and Silicon Carbide. The annual capacity of this brownfield expansion will be to the tune of 158.38 million units.

The devices manufactured by these proposed units will have applications in Automotive electronics including EVs and its charging infrastructure, Renewable energy systems, Power conversion applications, industrial applications and communication infrastructure.

The fourth project that received the Cabinet nod will be located in Andhra Pradesh. The chip packaging unit that will be set up by Advanced System in Package Technologies in the state, and is worth Rs 468 crore.

The unit will be set up under technology tie-up with APACT Co. Ltd, South Korea, with an annual capacity of 96 Million units. The manufactured products will find applications in mobile phones, set-top boxes, automobile applications, and other electronic products.