Power devices are the core components of new energy vehicle semiconductors, and are the key track for value enhancement. With the development of new energy vehicles, the demand for power devices is increasing, which has become a new growth point for power semiconductor devices. The most popular power devices are IGBT, SiC and GaN, especially the third-generation semiconductors. From project initiation, fund-raising and plant construction to equipment introduction and production, every step of a small power device has attracted wide attention from the industry. It is enough to show that the public is optimistic about the development prospects of power devices, as well as expectations for domestic power device manufacturers. Fortunately, many domestic IGBT, SiC, and GaN manufacturers have come one after another with good news of "commissioning", so that we are further away from the world's advanced manufacturers, and we can hope to be in the wave of new energy vehicles. Catch the shuttle bus.
Domestic power device manufacturers have come to a new stage of "commissioning"
On June 5th, Innosec's 8-inch silicon-based GaN Suzhou Phase I project was officially put into production. The project is expected to invest 8 billion yuan. The plant construction and equipment move in will be completed in 2020, and mass production will begin today, becoming the world The first company to achieve mass production of 8-inch silicon-based gallium nitride. Production capacity will gradually climb after production. By the end of 2021, the production capacity will reach 6,000 wafers/month. After the project is fully completed at the end of 2022, the Suzhou plant will achieve an annual production capacity of 780,000 8-inch silicon-based gallium nitride wafers, with an estimated annual output value of 15 billion yuan.
Innosec (Zhuhai) Technology Co., Ltd. was established on December 12, 2015. In November 2017, the commissioning ceremony of its "8-inch silicon-based gallium nitride production line" was held in Zhuhai. In June 2018, the company released the world's first 8-inch silicon-based gallium nitride WLCSP power product. In June 2018, the groundbreaking ceremony of the Suzhou Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Base was held in Fenhu High-tech Zone, Wujiang City.
On the morning of June 23, Sanan Semiconductor in Changsha, Hunan was officially lighted up and put into production. The biggest highlight of this base is that it is the first domestic and third global silicon carbide vertically integrated industrial chain including substrate materials, epitaxial growth, wafer manufacturing and packaging and testing. Hunan San'an Semiconductor SiC project has a total investment of 16 billion yuan. Since the groundbreaking in July 2020, the super factory with a monthly output of 30,000 6-inch silicon carbide wafers has been completed and put into production. The next step in production is to debug and tape out the process. After completion, the Hunan San’an Semiconductor Base is expected to achieve annual sales of 12 billion yuan.
Xiamen Sanan Integration was established in May 2014, and began to expand into high-end compound semiconductors in 2015. At the end of 2018, Sanan Integration released the SiC process platform, becoming the first domestic commercial 6-inch compound semiconductor integrated circuit to enter substantial mass production. Manufacturing platform.
So far, Sanan Integrated has launched advanced process technologies for RF applications such as GaAs HBT and pHEMT in the field of microwave and radio frequency, and has built a professional and large-scale 4-inch, 6-hour compound wafer manufacturing line. In the field of power electronics, SiC power diodes and silicon-based gallium nitride power devices with high reliability and high power density have been introduced.
On the afternoon of June 23, the completion and commissioning ceremony of the Sun.King Asia Pacific Semiconductor IGBT production line, a subsidiary of Sun.King Technology, was successfully held at the Sun.King IGBT production base, marking that its IGBT production line has entered the trial production stage. Sunjing Technology's IGBT project plans to build 2 IGBT chip backside process production lines and 5 IGBT module packaging and testing production lines. After completion, the annual production capacity will reach 2 million IGBT module products.
It is understood that Sunjing Technology officially launched its own technology IGBT project in March 2019. Subsequently, in July 2019, the Sun.King IGBT project was officially signed and settled in Jiashan. In June 2020, the construction of the Sun.King IGBT production base was started. In September of the same year, Sun.King's first IGBT chip and module products were officially launched. The company's IGBT product applications will cover the low- and medium-voltage fields from 600V to 1700V, and target the markets of electric vehicles, photovoltaic wind power, and industrial frequency conversion.
As early as March of this year, Zhang Penggang, senior vice president of global sales of Nexperia Semiconductor, said in an exclusive interview with CCTV that Wingtech Nexperia's 12-inch wafer fab in Lingang, Shanghai has broken ground in January this year and will start in 2022. It was put into production in July 2007, and the production capacity is expected to reach 400,000 wafers per year. Nexperia focuses on the production, design and sales of discrete devices, logic devices and MOSFET devices.
IGBT power chip enters 12 inches
At present, IGBTs have higher cost performance and maturity in most high-power application scenarios, and we cannot do without IGBTs for a while. Moreover, IGBT power devices have also begun to fully advance into automotive-grade chips. According to Star Semiconductor's financial report, in 2020, automotive-grade IGBT modules produced using Star Semiconductor's own chips will support more than 200,000 cars in the global market. According to Stratview Research's forecast on the IGBT market, it is estimated that the IGBT market may have a healthy compound annual growth rate of 4.5% from 2020 to 2025.
In the previous article "Domestic IGBT, what is the strength?", the author also made an introduction about the strength of domestic IGBT. Among them, it is worth mentioning that IGBT is a company that is highly dependent on the details of the production line. Take Infineon’s own report as an example, the same design, the performance of products produced on 6-inch and 8-inch wafer production lines The difference is huge, and the performance of the products produced on the same two 8-inch wafer production lines is also very different. This means that the design company cannot stand alone beyond the support of the foundry.
And Star Semiconductor, the leading IGBT company, has also worked closely with Hua Hong on the foundry of IGBT chips. On June 24, Hua Hong Semiconductor teamed up with Star Semiconductor to create automotive-grade IGBT chips and 12-inch IGBTs to achieve mass production. This IGBT chip has passed the product verification of terminal car companies and has entered the automotive application market such as power units. The cumulative shipment of IGBTs of the two parties has exceeded 250,000 equivalent 8-inch wafers.
In 2020, Hua Hong Semiconductor introduced the 8-inch IGBT technology to the 12-inch production line. After less than a year of research and development, it successfully established the IGBT wafer production process on the 12-inch production line. A pure wafer foundry company that mass-produces advanced trench gate field stop (FS, Field Stop) IGBTs with a 12-inch production line.
And the ramp up of its Wuxi plant's production capacity has been accelerating. Hua Hong's Wuxi 12-inch factory will contribute US$54.6 million in sales revenue in Q1 of 2020, accounting for 17.9% of total revenue, an increase of 53.1% from the previous quarter. Currently, the 12-inch plant in Wuxi has a monthly production capacity of over 40,000 pieces, of which 18,000 pieces are power devices, 10,000 pieces each for embedded Flash and CIS, and a small number of other products. The company started to accelerate the expansion plan of its 12-inch plant in Wuxi from last year. It is estimated that the monthly production capacity will reach 65,000 pieces by the end of this year, and it is expected to exceed 80,000 pieces by mid-2022.
At present, the most competitive production lines for IGBT products are 8-inch and 12-inch, and the leading manufacturer is Infineon. The vast majority of domestic wafer manufacturers were still at the stage of 6-inch products. At present, BYD, Zhuzhou CRRC Times, Shanghai Advanced, Huahong Grace, Silan Micro, etc. have achieved mass production of 8-inch products in China, and Silan Micro’s first 12-inch chip production line has been officially implemented in December 2020. Put into production.
China Resources Micro is also expanding its 12-inch production line. On June 7, 2020, the company announced that the company and the second phase of the Big Fund and Chongqing Xiyong will invest 9.5, 1.65, and 2.4 billion yuan respectively to establish Runxi Microelectronics. This project With an investment of about 7.55 billion yuan, it will form a 12-inch 30,000/month high-end power semiconductor wafer production capacity after completion, and support 12-inch epitaxial and thin-film processing capabilities. The production line will adopt a 90nm process and mainly produce power semiconductor products such as MOSFETs, IGBTs, and power management chips, in preparation for entering the fields of industrial control and automotive electronics.
It can be seen that domestic IGBT manufacturers have gradually caught up to 12 inches. Facts have proved that domestic IGBT manufacturers only need to work hard to continuously improve performance and quality, and the future can be expected.
SiC with many advantages, we still need to face the difficulties to catch up
In addition to being widely used in photovoltaic inverters, industrial power supplies and charging pile markets, SiC power devices are most importantly stimulated by the recent accelerated introduction of new energy vehicle manufacturers. The characteristics of low switching loss, high switching frequency and high temperature resistance make SiC a satisfactory Ideal for electric vehicle requirements. SiC has increased the efficiency of power devices by more than 2%, and SiC-based power devices have reduced the weight by 6 kilograms, and can ensure a 30% increase in vehicle mileage.
Yole report said that by 2024, the global market for automotive-grade SiC power devices is expected to reach 1.93 billion U.S. dollars, corresponding to a compound growth rate of 29% in 2018-2024. The compound growth rate of SiC power device applications from 2017 to 2023 is 27%, of which the compound growth rate of electric and hybrid vehicles is 81%, and the compound growth rate of charging piles/charging stations is 58%.
But the core reason why SiC has not really exploded is the high price. Compared with Si devices, the price of SiC is often several times higher. Although most charging units, inverters, DC-DC converters and electric vehicles are currently using silicon chips, most market suppliers have seen replacement needs from OEMs and primary and secondary suppliers in the automotive industry. Market suppliers such as Infineon Technologies, ST and NXP are betting heavily on SiC power semiconductors for the automotive market. Many SiC manufacturers have also signed multi-year supply agreements with wafer suppliers Cree/Wolfspeed and SiCrystal.
SiC has so many excellent characteristics, the market is a blue ocean. However, according to industry practitioners, there are still many gaps between China's SiC industry and imported brands in terms of substrates, epitaxy, and devices:
From the perspective of substrates, domestic 4-inch silicon carbide substrates are relatively close to the foreign level in quality, and have begun to be used in batches in some domestic brand devices. The 6-inch substrate has been mass-produced abroad, and it is still in a relatively early stage of verification in China. The 8-inch substrate may have been developed in China, and foreign brands such as Cree are expected to achieve mass production by 2023. Generally speaking, there is a big gap between domestic and foreign countries at the level of raw materials.
Coming to the epitaxial aspect, the overall difficulty of epitaxial manufacturing and the requirements for defect control are higher than that of the substrate. Domestic 4-inch epitaxial wafers have already had some large-scale applications. In the past two years, the performance of 4-inch epitaxial wafers has been further improved with the verification feedback from the market application side. The 6-inch substrate sheet has just entered the batch stage, and industry professionals pointed out that more resources need to be invested in order to narrow the gap with foreign countries.
In terms of devices, imported brands account for the bulk of the entire silicon carbide market share, especially in relatively high-end areas such as on-board power supply servers and communication power supplies. Under the general trend of domestic substitution, local brands have begun to penetrate into some areas with relatively high reliability requirements, especially for products with relatively small gaps such as silicon carbide diodes, which are expected to increase their market share in a relatively short time. Domestic silicon carbide MOSFETs need to be further improved in terms of technology and reliability in order to achieve mass production.
Although we are facing a certain gap, under the influence of market demand growth, technological improvement, policy support, global core shortage and other factors, domestic silicon carbide companies are currently developing rapidly, gradually increasing market share, and narrowing the gap with imported brands. A number of domestic companies, including Tianke Heda, Basic Semiconductor, Shandong Tianyue, Shanxi Shuoke and Hantian Tiancheng, are also cultivating in this field and seeking breakthroughs.
The GaN market doubles in 2020, and domestic GaN companies are developing rapidly
According to Yole, the power GaN market has doubled in 2020, highlighting the amazing growth of smartphone fast chargers and leading the telecommunications and automotive markets. In 2020, the GaN equipment market has 46 million U.S. dollars, of which consumer electronics accounted for 28.7 million U.S. dollars, and the telecommunications and mobile markets accounted for the second largest application field with 9.1 million U.S. dollars. Yole predicts that the overall compound annual growth rate of GaN from 2020 to 2026 will increase by approximately 70%, and it is expected to be $1.1 billion by 2026. The compound annual growth rate of consumer electronics is 69%, reaching 672 million US dollars; the compound annual growth rate of telecommunications and mobile markets is 71%, reaching 223 million US dollars; it is worth mentioning that the compound annual growth rate of the automotive market will reach 185% , There is a market of 155 million US dollars.