Producer
Sigatec SA
Joint venture (Ulysse Nardin / Mimotec) producing SILICON micro-components incl. hairsprings via deep-reactive-ion etching.
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Silicon watch components
Microfabrication services
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Did you know2024
Sigatec makes watch hairsprings the way chips are made. Instead of drawing and coiling a metal alloy, it etches the spring and escapement parts out of silicon wafers by deep reactive-ion etching in a cleanroom — the same microfabrication technique used to make MEMS semiconductors. Silicon regulating parts are antimagnetic, temperature-stable and need no lubrication, and they helped free watch brands from the alloy-hairspring chokepoint controlled by the Swatch Group. But only a handful of players can microfabricate them. So the cutting edge of centuries-old Swiss watchmaking is now, literally, a semiconductor process: old-world horology quietly runs on chip-fab technology, and the very components that liberated the industry from one dependency created a new one — on silicon-microfabrication capability. The most traditional of luxury crafts has a cleanroom at its heart.
Sigatec SA ↗Concentration2024
Sigatec's strategic role mirrors the alloy-hairspring story one technology later. The brands that don't make their own silicon parts (as Rolex and a few giants do) still need a source of silicon hairsprings and escapements — and the ability to microfabricate them is concentrated among very few suppliers: Sigatec as an independent, plus the Swatch-affiliated and the Rolex/Patek/Ulysse Nardin consortium efforts. So a non-vertically-integrated watch brand once again depends on a small number of component specialists for the single most performance-critical part of its movement, just as it once depended on Nivarox for alloy springs. The chokepoint moved from metallurgy to silicon micro-etching, but it stayed a chokepoint — and Sigatec is one of the narrow set of firms that hold it.
Sigatec SA ↗