The St. Charles County-based semiconductor manufacturer will receive part of a $400 million grant from the Biden Administration to bolster the U.S. semiconductor industry. The money will be used to help MEMC Corp. build a new center that will produce silicon wafers for semiconductor chips for the defense and aerospace sectors.
The initiative will also create 500 construction jobs and 130 manufacturing jobs.
Carla Chaney, the facility’s general manager, told Missourinet the O’Fallon Center was chosen for a reason.
“What we’re doing isn’t done anywhere else in the company, and very little else in the world,” Cheney says. “There’s limited competition for what we’re making, so it makes sense for us to expand and put that investment into our existing sites and not try to reinvent the wheel somewhere else.”
Cheney said COVID-19 has highlighted to the public the importance of semiconductors and made them a national security issue.
“We really don’t want these materials, or even our customers’ products, to be replicated overseas. As an American economy, we don’t want to be buying these things from overseas,” she explained. “So this is all an effort to bring it home.”
Semiconductors are the building blocks of modern technology found in today’s cars, smartphones, and video game systems.
“[Our products]can withstand harsh environments, and space is a harsh environment,” she said, “so it’s the material of choice for certain space applications and defense. These designs are what give us an edge over other global companies.”
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