Absolics, an affiliate of South Korean chemical material firm SKC and invested by Applied Materials, signed a Preliminary Memorandum of Terms (PMT) with the US Department of Commerce (DoC) on May 23. It is the first semiconductor materials and component supplier to receive the CHIPS Act subsidy.
The US DoC press release points out that US$75 million will be provided to Absolics, which has completed the construction of its first factory of Glass Core Substrate in Georgia, USA. The subsidy would account for 25% of the company's investment in new productions.
Abolics's first factory is scheduled to start mass production in the first half of 2025 to produce 12,000 square meters of GCS annually. Pilot production is in progress. The company is planning to invest in a second factory to produce 72,000 square meters of GCS annually. The total investment of the two factories is estimated to be over US$400 million.
Compared to existing plastic substrates, glass substrates are expected to reduce power consumption by more than 30% due to the characteristics of glass, which allows for finer circuitry and reduced thickness, as well as being more heat-resistant, which is conducive to high-performance wafer bonding.
Generative AI has brought about a boom in GPUs and High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM), and glass substrates are also seen as a new business that can change the market demand and supply, and are expected to be used by big tech companies operating large-scale data centers, as well as high-efficiency semiconductor manufacturing companies.
