The Bosch Group is investing some 550 million euros in the construction of a new manufacturing facility for 200 mm semiconductors at its site in Reutlingen, near Stuttgart.

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Construction of the facility is to begin in the autumn of 2007. Rollout of production is planned for mid-2009. The plant will have a total capacity of up to 1,000 silicon wafers per day, equivalent to a daily production volume of up to one million microchips. Bosch has been manufacturing 150-mm semiconductors in Reutlingen for ten years now. In total, some 800 jobs will be created in the new 200-mm semiconductor manufacturing facility by 2012.

Semiconductor and micromachined chips from Reutlingen are used above all in the automobile industry. As components in electronic control units, they form the "central nervous system" of many functions in the vehicle, including electronic safety systems such as ABS, ESP, or airbags, fuel-efficient and clean engines with electronic engine management, or modern driver assistance systems.

The new 200-mm wafer fab in Reutlingen will mainly be geared to the "smart power process." In this technology, integrated circuits combine on one chip highly sensitive signal processing and high-voltage circuits for the control of high-performance actuators.

In the initial stages, these structures will be 0.35 micrometers wide. At a later stage, Bosch plans to halve structure width to 0.18 micrometers.