An EIC Accelerator Detour: Scientific Visual's SiC Crystal Scanner

Silicon carbide (SiC) is the semiconductor behind the power electronics of electric cars, but its crystals are hard to grow without flaws, and the flaws are usually found only after a crystal has been sliced and polished into wafers. Scientific Visual, a company near Lausanne that built scanners to look inside raw sapphire, proposed to do the same for opaque SiC before any cutting. The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 8 January 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot cut-off names Scientific Visual SA of Lausanne for a grant-only award for "SiC_Scope", a "Scanner for Early-Stage Quality Control in Silicon Carbide Crystals", with no partner company listed for the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,455,075 towards a total cost of €3,507,250, from 1 April 2020 to 31 December 2022.

The scanner exists. It was unveiled as the "SiC Puck Scanner" in September 2025 at the International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials in Busan, sold together with the German equipment maker PVA TePla, according to the company's product page and a cover article the two firms wrote for Compound Semiconductor. But PVA TePla, which had bought 23.9% of Scientific Visual in 2024, wrote that stake and its options to buy more down to zero at the end of 2025, citing "operational challenges" at the company, according to its 2025 annual report.

Where Scientific Visual Stands Now

Scientific Visual SA is an existing company in the Swiss commercial register, with its seat in Renens, according to Zefix. It moved there from Lausanne in August 2024. Its latest entry in the commercial gazette (SHAB/FOSC), on 5 February 2026, records that Frédéric Falise, the chief operating officer and a director since 2016, "n'est plus administrateur" (is no longer a director), and that Ivan Orlov is no longer chairman and now signs alone, which leaves him as the only board member listed; North Data shows the same change. The company's team page still lists Falise as COO.

The company is still publishing news. In February 2026 it announced a collaboration on inspecting titanium-doped sapphire for laser crystals, without naming the partner. In March 2026 it hosted a visit by China's education minister, and in July 2026 Orlov presented at an EIC Corporate Day, where the company says he discussed "collaboration opportunities with Asian industrial partners". Its home page leads with sapphire scanners for crystal growers and watchmakers, and an online marketplace for pre-inspected sapphire boules; the SiC scanner is one product among several.

Scientific Visual's revenue, results and headcount have not been published. The only figures come from its shareholder: PVA TePla's 2024 parent-company accounts list Scientific Visual with equity of €292,000 at 31 December 2023 and a 2023 loss of €251,000, according to the PVA TePla AG financial statements 2024. Its 2025 financial statements show equity of €646,000 for Scientific Visual in the column dated 31 December 2025; the result printed next to it in that table cannot be matched reliably to the company and is left out here.

The Technology: Looking Through a Crystal Before Cutting It

Crystal growers usually learn how many defects a SiC "puck" (a short cylinder of grown crystal) contains only after slicing a test wafer and etching it, or after the whole puck has been turned into wafers. In the EIC proposal, Scientific Visual said unnoticed defects affect "as many as 70% of all final wafers" and that its scanner, based on refractive index matching, would map defects before processing and save a single grower "6.5M€/year", according to the CORDIS objective. The company's existing scanners worked on transparent crystals such as sapphire; the project was to adapt them to SiC, which the proposal calls "a non-transparent crystal".

The final project report describes the result as "an innovative 3D scanning tool" that combines "index-matching fluids, confocal tomography, and specialized software" and covers pucks from 4 to 12 inches in diameter, according to the CORDIS reporting page. The product sold today scans a 6-inch puck in 1 hour 20 minutes and an 8-inch puck in about 2 hours, in two configurations for 6 to 8 and 10 to 12 inches, and the company says it handles doped and semi-insulating SiC alike, according to its product page. The same page says: "We are not aware of any other dedicated SiC puck scanners." In Compound Semiconductor, the authors from both companies write that up to "50-60 percent of the wafering cost" can be preserved by rejecting defective material early, and describe one test puck, 150 mm wide, whose scan correlated with later Raman and photoluminescence inspection of its wafers. Both figures come from the companies themselves; no independent test has been published.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

SiC_Scope ran its full 33 months and is closed. Its final report lists work on the measuring principle, "500+ mechanical parts", detection software, a patent-pending "Smart Wafering" method to plan wafer cuts around defects, and industrial prototypes for 4 to 12-inch crystals tested "with 5 top tier companies", which are not named, according to CORDIS. The objective's commercial goal was that Scientific Visual "expects to attain absolute market leadership". At the end of the project, in December 2022, no product launch or sale had been announced; the launch came in September 2025, with a partner, according to the company's announcement and Compound Semiconductor. No customer, order or installed SiC scanner has been made public by either company.

1. Adapt the sapphire scanner to opaque SiCDelivered3D SiC scanner described in the final report and sold as the SiC Puck Scanner.
2. Crystals of 4 to 12 inchesDeliveredProduct configurations for 6 to 8 and 10 to 12 inches.
3. Industrial validationPartlyTests with five unnamed companies, reported only by the company.
4. Market launchLateSeptember 2025, more than two and a half years after the project ended.
5. €6.5M a year saved per growerNot shownNo customer has reported savings.
6. "Absolute market leadership"Not achievedNo SiC customer or sale announced; investor impaired its stake.

CORDIS lists three more Horizon 2020 grants with Scientific Visual as sole participant: SAPPHIRO, a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study in 2018 that targeted "€ 10.5 million in revenues" by 2022, a figure the company has never reported reaching; a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship also called SiC_Scope, worth up to €203,149.44, which started on 30 September 2021 and was "terminated on 16 December 2021"; and GaNSpector, a €191,149.44 fellowship from April 2021 to March 2023 to extend the scanner to gallium nitride. The company's website also mentions a grant from EIT RawMaterials, whose amount it does not state. CORDIS records the SiC_Scope money as an EU contribution; it shows nothing else about who funded it.

The Money Since the Grant

Scientific Visual has never announced a venture round. Its share capital has grown in small steps, mostly by converting debts into shares: from CHF 169,521 in January 2020 to CHF 198,291 in June 2022 and CHF 285,215 in August 2024, according to SHAB/FOSC entries reproduced in Zefix. The company also says it is backed by the Swiss federal Technology Fund, which issues loan guarantees of up to CHF 3 million rather than grants, according to Swissmem; the size of any guarantee is not public. The data provider CB Insights counts $5.56 million raised over six rounds, including grants and a loan, without public amounts per round; this could not be checked against a second source.

The one disclosed investor is PVA TePla, a listed German maker of crystal-growing furnaces and metrology systems. On 7 August 2024 it announced an "exclusive collaboration" and the purchase of "25 percent of the shares", at an undisclosed price, according to its press release and the German EQS version. Its own accounts give a different figure: 23.9%, bought in July 2024 by PVA TePla Analytical Systems GmbH according to the 2024 parent accounts, and on 7 August 2024 according to the 2025 group report. The same report says PVA TePla received the right to buy further shares in 2027 and 2029; in its valuation model the two options cover 42.75% and 33.33% of the shares, with strike prices set at 3.5 and 3 times forecast revenue.

A year later the picture had changed. PVA TePla's half-year report 2025 blamed part of its weaker financial result on "a negative at-equity result from the stake in Scientific Visual". At the year end it found "operational challenges in the business environment of Scientific Visual SA" pointing to "a sustainably changed earnings and financial position", took its €636,000 share of the 2025 loss, impaired the remaining €2,035,000 and set the options, valued at €958,000 a year earlier, to zero, according to the 2025 annual report (quotes translated). The impairment came three months after the two companies launched the scanner together. PVA TePla still holds the shares; whether the exclusive collaboration continues has not been announced.

Scientific Visual is not among the 326 organisations on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 17 pages; its award was grant only, so no EIC equity was planned.

Why Europe Should Care

SiC wafers are a bottleneck for power chips in electric vehicles, chargers and renewable energy inverters, and the EU's Chips Act, in force since 21 September 2023, aims to "ensure the resilience of supply chains and reduce external dependencies", according to the European Commission. A tool that lets growers discard bad crystal before the expensive slicing stage fits that aim. The case also shows the limits of a grant: the EIC paid for a working instrument, but turning it into sales took a partner, and that partner has since valued its stake at nothing.

The Verdict

Scientific Visual and PVA TePla were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.