Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Automobile electrification is driving SiC to get on the bus, and the SiC industry chain has also benefited from the rapid development. Among them, the power module packaging technology AMB (active metal brazing) has also been favored by the market. Industry insiders said, "AMB substrate as the core supporting material of SiC, the difficulty of promotion lies in the high cost, which will accompany SiC boarding to make a breakthrough in the field of new energy vehicles."

In order to meet the needs of automotive electrification development, domestic and foreign enterprises have long been in the layout of SiC, and the emergence of Tianyue Heda, Tianyue advanced, Tongguang Crystal, Century Jinguang, Lou Xiao Technology, China Science and Steel Research, Tyco Tianrun, Wujin Kehua and other industrial chain enterprises; in the field of AMB, local enterprises are relatively few, however, with the help of SiC to accelerate the boarding trend, is attracting more and more enterprises to increase the layout of AMB.

New energy vehicles are becoming a breakthrough in the AMB substrate as automobile electrification rapidly enters the 2.0 fast charging stage, more and more pure electric models with a range of more than 500km are on the market, and the market also puts forward higher requirements for fast charging time, which needs to be shortened from the current common 30-60 minutes to less than 20 minutes, and some enterprises even put forward a 5-minute extremely fast energy replenishment plan.

The new changes in the market put forward higher requirements for high-voltage charging platform and power devices. With the advantages of resistance to high voltage, high temperature, high efficiency, high frequency and anti-radiation, SiC reduces its energy loss by half compared with Si-based chips in electronic control scenarios, and is considered to replace IGBT as the core device of the future high-voltage charging platform. It is also the key device to improve the performance and application experience of electric vehicles, and is popular in the market. A number of enterprises have also emerged in the supply chain, such as Tiankeheda, Tianyue Advanced, Tongguang Crystal, Century Jinguang, Lou Xiao Technology, Zhongke Steel Research, Tyco Tianrun, Wujinke, BYD Electronics and so on.

"although the cost of SiC is higher than that of IGBT now, SiC can save more costs in the later stage, and the adoption of SiC is more cost-effective throughout the life cycle." Some industry insiders said. Recently, insiders of a large domestic power device manufacturer also believe that the production capacity of SiC is coming out one after another, and with the continuous expansion of output, the cost will become lower and lower. It is expected that SiC will form an overall cost advantage to IGBT in the next 3-5 years, thus getting better popularity.

SiC large-scale boarding has begun to enter the countdown, it is understood that there are already Tesla Model 3, BYD Han, Weilai ES7 / ET7 / ET5, Xiaopeng G9, Geely Smart elf, Wuling Capgemini hybrid version and Wuling Star hybrid version and other models equipped with SiC. In addition, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Lexus, Lucid, Karma and other brands also plan to launch corresponding SiC models. New energy vehicle brands and high-end models have become an important driver of SiC.

The acceleration of SiC boarding speed is promoting the development of upstream SiC industry chain enterprises, in which AMB will also benefit from rapid development.

It is understood that the copper layer adhesion of the AMB substrate is between 16N / mm~29N / mm, which is much higher than 15N / mm of the DBC process, and is more suitable for high-precision ceramic substrate circuit boards. This characteristic also makes the AMB substrate have high-temperature and high-frequency characteristics, the thermal conductivity is more than 3 times that of DBC alumina, and can reduce the thermal resistance of SiC by about 10% in the process of use, improve battery efficiency, and significantly improve the application of SiC and new energy vehicles.

However, there are still some shortcomings in the AMB process, which is much more difficult to realize than DBC and DPC, has high technical requirements, and needs to be further improved in terms of yield and materials, which makes the current implementation cost of the technology relatively high. "AMB is considered to be the best collocation scheme for SiC, but at present, the cost of AMB substrate is about 3 times that of DBC, which is an important factor hindering its development." Industry insiders further pointed out that "as SiC continues to make breakthroughs in cars, AMB is expected to gain new development opportunities with the development of new energy vehicles, and will accelerate penetration with the continuous breakthroughs in the production and sales of new energy vehicles."

The market is giving birth to a number of domestic supply chain enterprises AMB substrate for SiC supporting advantages are obvious, the industrial chain also saw this opportunity, there are industry insiders analysis, to 2025 domestic new energy vehicle AMB market size is expected to exceed 6 billion yuan, in addition, in photovoltaic, wind power, rail transit and other fields, there is also a huge demand for AMB, it can be foreseen that the market scale is more than 10 billion. However, subject to the high threshold of AMB technology, there are not many enterprises in the local supply chain focusing on AMB technology solutions. At present, a large part of the domestic demand is met by international enterprises.

It is understood that at present, in the field of AMB, the leading enterprises are mainly from Europe, Japan and South Korea, such as Germany's Rogers (Rogers Corporation), Heraeus Technology Group, Japan's Tonghe Holdings (DOWA), Barrier Co., Ltd. (NGK), Electrochemical Co., Ltd. (Denka), Kyocera Co., Ltd. (KYOCERA Corporation), Toshiba High-tech Materials Co., Ltd., South Korea's KCC Group, AMOGREENTECH and so on.

Benefiting from the new opportunities of SiC, some international companies are already planning to expand production of AMB. For example, Toshiba Hi-Tech Materials Co., Ltd. opened a large branch plant last year to start producing silicon nitride ceramic substrates; in February this year, Rogers Guan Xuan expanded the production capacity of AMB substrates at the Eshenbach plant in Germany.

At a time when international enterprises are actively expanding production, a number of AMB substrate manufacturers have emerged, such as Bomin Electronics, Xinzhou Electronics, Huaqing Electronics, Fulehua Semiconductors, Leqi Technology, Dehui Electronics, Moshi Technology, Shengda Electronics, Tianyang Electronics, Song porcelain New Materials, Weispall Semiconductors, Fengpeng Electronics, Licheng Optoelectronics, Fengpeng Electronics, etc.

At present, there are a certain number of local enterprises in R & D and production of AMB substrate, but in the eyes of industry insiders, there is still a certain gap between local enterprises and international leading enterprises in technology, among which, ceramic substrate, sintering materials, sintering process, copper foil sintering process and so on are still important indicators for testing an enterprise's AMB technological strength, and some domestic enterprises are still in the stage of research and development. Among them, Bomin Electronics, Xinzhou Electronics, Huaqing Electronics, Fulehua Semiconductor, Dehui Electronics and other enterprises have begun to stand out.

Ceramic liner based on AMB process produced by Bomin Electronics Microcore Division is one of the important components of power module, which has the advantages of high thermal conductivity, high reliability, heat resistance, impact resistance, high performance and so on. Related products have been certified in rail transit, industrial grade, vehicle regulation and other fields, and the products have been tested and mass-produced in aviation system, CRRC system, Zhenhua Technology, Guodian Nanrui, BYD Semiconductor and other customers. In terms of production capacity, the current design capacity of Bomin Electronics production line is 80,000 sheets / month, which is expected to reach 150,000 sheets / month by the end of this year, and is expected to expand to 200,000 sheets / month in 2023.

Core boat electronics is one of the earliest domestic enterprises to develop AMB technology, with independent solder and sintering technology, and can reach the international leading level. In October 2021, Xinzhou Electronics received a capital increase of about 5 million yuan from Bomin Electronics, and the two sides cooperated in the field of AMB. It is understood that after the cooperation between the two sides, only half a year later, the products launched have been recognized by SiC power semiconductors related customers.

Huaqing Electronics is the largest and highest output aluminum nitride ceramic substrate enterprise in China, which received strategic investment from BAIC and SAIC, and successfully raised 180 million yuan at the end of 2021. The financing funds are mainly used for the expansion of aluminum nitride ceramic substrate and the construction of ceramic metallization production line.

Fulehua Semiconductor and Dehui Electronics are also one of the few enterprises in China to form an AMB scale, the former relying on Ferrotec Group, has formed an annual production capacity of 1800 million pieces of semiconductor copper-clad ceramic substrate, and plans to build an annual production line of 1000 million pieces of semiconductor power module ceramic substrate with an annual production capacity of 1 billion yuan in the first half of this year. The second phase of the latter project has entered the trial production stage, and the annual production capacity of 1.44 million pieces of high-performance ceramic copper clad laminate will be realized when it is put into production. At present, it is actively introducing the IATF16949 international automobile industry quality management system technical standards.

It should be noted that as SiC is still in the climbing stage of "getting on the train", the AMB process is mainly used in the field of IGBT, such as Bomin Electronics, which uses the advantages of AMB to replace the DBC process in IGBT.

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