Soitec Brand Guidelines: A 1992 CEA-Leti Spin-Off, Smart Cut & Silicon on Insulator

Two researchers and a way of slicing silicon.

Soitec was founded in 1992 near Grenoble by André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé and Jean-Michel Lamure, two researchers from CEA-Leti, the micro- and nanotechnology institute of France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, according to English and French Wikipedia. Its purpose was to industrialise silicon on insulator, or SOI: a wafer in which a thin layer of silicon sits on an insulating layer rather than on bulk silicon. English Wikipedia says SOI reduces energy leakage in the substrate and improves the performance of the circuit built on it.

The technology had a long laboratory history. French Wikipedia says CEA-Leti had worked on SOI since 1974, with the CEA’s military applications directorate, for defence needs, and that in 1991 Leti’s research made competitive manufacturing costs possible through the Smart Cut process. English Wikipedia credits the Smart Cut patent to the researcher Michel Bruel and describes the process: a thin layer of single-crystal material is transferred from a donor wafer to another by combining ion implantation with bonding by molecular adhesion. Soitec’s own history calls Smart Cut an “atomic-scale scalpel.”

Industrial scale took most of the decade. English Wikipedia says Soitec moved to mass production after signing a Smart Cut licence with Shin-Etsu Handotai, the Japanese silicon maker, in 1997; the company describes a strategic alliance with SEH and a pilot line in the same period. In 1999 it built its first production plant, Bernin 1, at Bernin in the Isère, and went public on the Paris Nouveau Marché, now part of Euronext Paris; the company says it then had more than 100 employees. In 2002 Bernin 2, a plant for 300 mm wafers, began production, French Wikipedia says.

A detour into solar, and a return.

Through the 2000s Soitec widened its range. English Wikipedia lists the purchase of Picogiga International in 2003, its first step into materials other than SOI, with III-V compound semiconductors; of Tracit Technologies in 2006, for molecular bonding and thinning processes; and of the equipment maker Altatech Semiconductor in 2011. The company says it opened its first commercial subsidiary, in Tokyo, in 2004 and an office in Taiwan the next year. In 2008 it opened a production unit in Singapore; English Wikipedia says the site later housed SOI wafer recycling and was then prepared for FD-SOI production. The same year, the company says, it and the CEA set up a Substrate Innovation Center.

It also went into energy. In 2009 Soitec bought Concentrix Solar, a German supplier of concentrator photovoltaic systems, and in 2012 opened a plant for such modules in San Diego, English Wikipedia says; in December 2014 its research produced what Wikipedia describes as a world-record four-junction solar cell converting 46 percent of sunlight into electricity. The venture did not last. In January 2015, after several large solar projects ended, Soitec said it would leave the solar market and refocus on electronics. French Wikipedia says the company was then close to bankruptcy, and that the refocusing followed the appointment of Paul Boudre as chief executive.

The electronics business had a partner in FD-SOI, fully depleted silicon on insulator, which English Wikipedia says came from cooperation between Soitec, STMicroelectronics and CEA-Leti. In 2014 Samsung licensed the technology from ST for 28 nm chips, and between 2017 and 2020 Soitec signed supply agreements with GlobalFoundries and Samsung, according to Wikipedia. It began volume production of 300 mm RF-SOI wafers, used in radio-frequency chips, in 2016. Later purchases added gallium nitride, through EpiGaN in 2019, and silicon carbide, through NovaSiC at the end of 2021, French Wikipedia says.

Design and documentation.

Silicon-wafer and chip-materials makers sell to a small number of very large customers, and their public image is built for engineers, investors and recruits rather than shoppers. Most of what they make never reaches a consumer’s hand: a polished wafer, a bottle of photoresist or a photomask is used up or hidden inside a chip long before anything is sold in a shop.

Their pictures tend to come from the factory floor. Corporate reports and websites in this field favour mirror-polished silicon wafers catching the light of a cleanroom, cylindrical crystal ingots drawn slowly out of a furnace, photolithography bays lit in amber to protect light-sensitive resists, and racks of high-purity chemical bottles. People appear mostly as technicians in full-body cleanroom suits, often called bunny suits, with only their eyes showing.

Names in this group often record a history. Shin-Etsu joins two old Japanese provinces, and SUMCO is an acronym of the company formed by a 1999 merger. The palettes in these guides are our own interpretations, not official colours.

The industry meets at its trade shows. SEMICON West in the United States, SEMICON Taiwan in Taipei and SEMICON Japan in Tokyo bring wafer, chemical and equipment suppliers onto the same floor as chipmakers, and booths there show the same vocabulary of wafers, ingots and cleanroom imagery. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it, where it makes its products — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Bernin, boardrooms and a new chief.

Soitec’s recent history has been public. On 19 January 2022 Le Figaro reported that the company had announced Paul Boudre would leave at the end of his term in July 2022, to be replaced by Pierre Barnabé of Atos, a decision the executive committee had opposed; the paper said Bpifrance, the CEA and the Chinese group NSIG together held about a third of the capital in roughly equal parts. Barnabé took office in July 2022, La Tribune reported. On 28 September 2023 Soitec inaugurated Bernin 4, a plant for its SmartSiC silicon carbide substrates aimed at electric vehicles, the same paper reported. A further extension at Bernin, planned as two more plants, met opposition from a local collective, STopMicro, and on 19 March 2024 Soitec told France’s national public-debate commission that the project was suspended, French Wikipedia says.

The leadership changed again in 2026. Barnabé stepped down at the end of March, and Laurent Rémont became chief executive on 1 April 2026, according to French Wikipedia; Soitec’s full-year results release of 27 May 2026 was issued under his name, from Bernin. The company describes itself as a designer and maker of semiconductor materials, and names product platforms including FD-SOI, RF-SOI, Photonics-SOI and SmartSiC. It says SmartSiC won an Electrons d’or award in November 2023, from the trade magazine ElectroniqueS and the industry association ACSIEL, in the analog semiconductors category.

The company frames its story around its origins. Its history page calls Soitec a “gem from French tech,” marks its 30th anniversary, and says it wrote a purpose into its bylaws: “We are the innovative foundation of smart and energy-efficient technologies that sustainably transform our daily lives.” It also says its Singapore site has 4,000 square metres of clean rooms. English Wikipedia lists production in France and Singapore, with research centres and offices in the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

For a design guide, Soitec shows how a research spin-off can make one process, Smart Cut, the centre of its identity for three decades. Compare Shin-Etsu Chemical, whose wafer arm Shin-Etsu Handotai licensed Smart Cut in 1997, and Siltronic, another European wafer maker. For this guide we use an indigo, an oxide blue and a teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Soitec’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.