The U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it would award up to $79 million to Coherent, a provider of materials and lasers for industrial, communications, electronics and instrumentation markets, under the CHIPS and Science Act.
The proposed investment would support the expansion of its existing manufacturing facility in Easton, Pennsylvania, and would create approximately 360 jobs.
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“Building from the legacy of Bell Labs and Western Electric producing the first transistors here, Lehigh Valley’s semiconductor and tech sectors continue to grow as Coherent expands its production of semiconductor chips here,” said Don Cunningham, president and CEO of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation. “The CHIPS Act has helped to invigorate and grow the tech sector in a region that’s home to Intel, Broadcom, Infinera, Coherent and about 30 other hardware technology companies.”
The investment would support the expansion of Coherent’s Easton plant to increase the production capacity of 150mm and 200mm silicon carbide (SiC) substrates. It would also support the expansion of the facility’s SiC epitaxial wafer manufacturing capacity, the back end of line processing, electronic performance and reliability testing capabilities.
SiC substrates are an important bandgap material with end uses in energy and military applications. The investment could increase the substrate capacity by over 750,000 substrates per year and more than double the output of epitaxial wafers annually.
Coherent has indicated they plan to claim the Department of the Treasury’s Advanced Manufacturing Investment Credit (CHIPS ITC), which is 25% of qualified capital expenditures.
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