From September 23 to 25, the reporter learned at the "2021 China Electronic Materials Industry Technology Development Conference" held in Guangzhou, with 5G base station, mobile phone charging and new energy electric vehicles and other emerging fields of semiconductor devices put forward higher requirements on power, efficiency, heat dissipation and miniaturization, Silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) as the representative of the wide band gap semiconductor is widely used, and accelerating into the golden development period.
In recent years, China's electronic materials industry has made great progress, forming a relatively complete industrial chain, electronic materials are more diverse, covering many fields from basic materials to semiconductor materials, sales revenue increased year by year, the average annual growth rate of about 7%. In 2020, the annual output value of the domestic electronic materials industry was 736 billion yuan.
In the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Outline of vision and Goals for 2035, which was adopted in March 2021, the development of silicon carbide, gallium nitride and other wide band gap semiconductors was specifically proposed in the field of "integrated circuit".
According to IHS Markit, the SiC power components market is expected to reach $3 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 30.4%. In the next 10 years, 4-inch SiC single crystal substrates will gradually be replaced by 6-8 inch substrates, thus further reducing the cost of power devices. Benefiting from the complex international environment and policy promotion, local SiC single crystal substrates have developed rapidly in recent years.
Feng Zhihong, chief scientist in the field of electronic functional materials of China Electronics Technology Group Co., LTD., said that electric vehicles have very high reliability requirements for SiC products, and reducing defects is one of the important directions of the development of single crystal substrates and epitaxial technology. At present, mainstream manufacturers have the ability to prepare low microtube density substrates. The reduction of TSD(spiral dislocations) and BPD(base dislocations) density will become the focus of substrate manufacturers' research and development work. It is reported that the SiC substrate cost accounts for about 47% of the total price of power devices, therefore, it is the determining factor to reduce the cost of SiC power devices.
"In the next 30 years, the market competition will become more intense, the substrate price will further slowly decline, electric vehicles become the main growth force of SiC devices, SiC power devices are predicted to grow at a cagR of up to 28% in 5 years." Feng zhihong said.
When talking about the development of GaN, Feng Zhihong said that the current semi-insulated SiC single crystal substrate for GaN epitaxial is developing in the direction of large size. In the next 10 years, 4 inches SiC single crystal substrate will be gradually replaced by 6 inches, in order to reduce the price of GaN rf power devices. At the same time, GaN novel heterojunction materials are expected to expand the GaN high-frequency application market. At present, the mainstream Si substrate size for GaN epitaxial is 6 inches, which will be extended to 8 inches in the next 5 years and 12 inches in the next 10 to 15 years, which will greatly reduce the unit area price of epitaxial chip.
Yole's report shows that the market capacity of power GaN doubled last year, mainly due to the penetration of huawei, Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung and other manufacturers' fast charging applications, will continue to maintain a rapid growth trend in the future, and is expected to penetrate into the field of electric vehicles. Feng Zhihong pointed out that at present, mainstream manufacturers have completed the research and development work of 100mm diameter GaN single crystal substrate, and are entering the stage of mass production. A few manufacturers are carrying out research and development work of 150mm diameter. It is expected that in 5 years, the price per unit area of substrate will decrease slightly with the rapid promotion of 100mm diameter substrate.