At more than 600 million euros, the new Bosch wafer fab in Reutlingen, is the largest single investment in the history of the Bosch Group. This manufacturing facility produces integrated circuits (ICs) and micromechanical components (MEMS).

These microchips are intended for automotive electronic systems, but are also increasingly finding their way into applications for cell phones, laptops, or game consoles.

The manufacture of highly integrated semiconductor circuits starts with a wafer. In a long sequence of different process stages, a large number of electronically integrated circuits is created on this wafer. Materials are worked into the silicon, layers are deposited, and structures are etched into the surface.

In the case of micromechanical chips (MEMS), moreover, structures on and in the ultrathin wafers have to be created in such a way that motion or air pressure can be measured and converted into electrical signals.

Bosch developed the manufacturing processes needed to make such three-dimensional processing economical. It was the first company in the world to introduce them.

These new processes result in extremely fine vertical-walled structures, in moved masses and oscillating spring elements, or vacuum chambers inside the silicon – and all this at the micron level, in dimensions much finer than a human hair.