South Korea's Samsung and Germany's Siltronic, a unit of chemical giant Wacker-Chemie, yesterday announced plans to jointly build a wafer plant here that will employ 800 workers when production goes into full swing in 2010.

This joint venture is one of the largest investments pumped into Singapore's vital electronics sector to date and also marks one of Singapore's first forays into making 300mm silicon wafers-- the hottest segment of the industry.

Silicon wafers are ultra-thin slivers of pure silicon used by wafer fabs to etch fine circuits onto the surface. The Singapore plant's 300mm technology will employ larger silicon wafers that substantially boost cost-cutting and productivity as more circuits can be squeezed into each wafer.

These circuits eventually finish up in electronics products like MP3 players and cellphones.

Singapore already makes 200mm silicon wafers at Siltronic's existing plant in Tampines. Just last week, it received another vote of confidence from French silicon semiconductor giant Soitec, which will set up a 350 million euro (US$442.84 million) 300mm plant in Pasir Ris employing 500 people by 2009.