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

Wide band gap semiconductors enter the "eve" of the explosion.

Author: Fei Fei |

Editor: Tang Shi |

At the end of November last year, Tesla's new Model 3 went on sale, and its product design and functional changes attracted outside attention.

In Tesla's Model 3 model, SiC has been applied in mass production, which has attracted the attention of automakers all over the world. The intelligent electric vehicle with SiC chip can improve the mileage, which is of great significance to break through the bottleneck of the existing battery energy consumption and control system, and even the whole new energy vehicle industry.

At present, it is generally believed that wide band gap semiconductors represented by SiC will become the main materials of the next generation semiconductors, so what is the current development status of wide band gap semiconductors? What are the differences in the development of wide band gap semiconductors at home and abroad? What are the challenges facing the future development?

01. Tesla Model 3 first batch of SiC

For global automakers, Tesla's every move will attract a high degree of attention. Tesla Model 3 is equipped with SiC chips, making it one of the first car manufacturers in the world to use SiC chips in mass production. Based on the success of Model 3 in the market and the advantages of SiC in mileage, SiC has quickly become the focus of global chip manufacturers and automobile manufacturers.

After the German chipmaker Infineon launched the SiC module for the inverter of electric vehicles, Hyundai announced that it would use SiC chips in its electric vehicles and made it clear that electric vehicles using SiC chips would increase their mileage by 5%, which gave SiC a positive promotion.

In fact, SiC chips do have incomparable advantages over conventional semiconductors, and from the development of SiC, it is not difficult to see that SiC is also a relatively more mature material.

Previously, silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge), as the mainstream of the semiconductor industry, are widely used in integrated circuit, aerospace, new energy and photovoltaic industries. With the development of high-end manufacturing and high-power light-emitting electronic devices, the requirements for frequency, efficiency and noise are higher and higher. The second generation semiconductor gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP) emerge as the times require.

But up to now, mankind has made continuous breakthroughs in the frontier fields such as 5G communications, smart grid, aerospace satellites, new energy vehicles and so on. Chip materials with smaller size, better performance and higher efficiency have become the rigid demand of industrial progress. Market demand forces chip materials to innovate constantly.

In this case, SiC silicon carbide and GaN gallium nitride, as the third generation compound semiconductor materials, have officially entered people's field of vision. As mentioned in the previous Hyundai Automobile, SiC materials are more resistant to high temperature and corrosion, which helps to increase power and reduce heat dissipation, which is indeed of great significance to improve the life of new energy vehicles.

02. International giants have not completed their monopoly and have the conditions to catch up at home.

At present, the research on the third generation semiconductor materials SiC and GaN is relatively mature. Compared with the previous two generations of semiconductor materials, SiC has obvious advantages in band gap, and it is also more resistant to high temperature and radiation, so it is especially suitable for high power, high temperature and high radiation applications. GaN materials are more voltage-resistant, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant, so they are more suitable for light-emitting devices. Based on the obvious advantages in performance, relevant enterprises at home and abroad are actively developing wide band gap semiconductor materials.

Looking at the whole world, at present, the wide band gap semiconductor technology and industry are still dominated by foreign enterprises, but the international giants have not yet formed industry standards and have not formed a complete monopoly in scale. At the same time, China's domestic demand market is huge, has obvious advantages in the market and application, and the industrial chain is becoming more and more perfect.

In the international market, wide band gap semiconductor materials have entered the rapid development stage of industrialization, and are widely used in new energy vehicles, 5G communications, photovoltaic, consumer electronics and other fields. Representative enterprises include Wolfspeed, onsemi, ROHM and so on. Wolfspeed, for example, is the world's largest manufacturer of SiC substrates. Its main business is specializing in SiC materials, focusing on the third generation compound semiconductors.

Compared with the international market, domestic enterprises have lagged behind in overall technology research and development and market application, but in recent years, the technological level has been continuously improved, and some technologies have reached the international advanced level. For example, it has obvious advantages in wide band gap semiconductor microwave RF chip technology.

In addition, the industrial application of semiconductor lighting technology is also relatively more mature. At the beginning of 2022, the total output value of China's wide band gap semiconductor industry is close to 800 billion yuan, most of which comes from semiconductor lighting.

03. The prospect of industry is broad, and cost reduction is the key.

The rapid rise of wide band gap semiconductors has become the focus of competition in global semiconductors and related industries. China's domestic market is large in scale and is market application-driven development model. In the long run, China's wide band gap semiconductors have many advantages in industrialization.

In addition, compared with the integrated circuit industry, the wide band gap semiconductor industry has relatively low requirements for process technology, design process and precision, so the threshold for enterprises to enter is not high, which also provides the possibility for the growth of domestic enterprises.

Capital has also seen the huge prospect of the wide band gap semiconductor industry, and is also accelerating the development of the wide band gap semiconductor industry. In 2021, even in the context of the epidemic, more than 60 enterprises have completed financing, which shows that wide band gap semiconductors are also highly valued by capital.

Of course, when we see the prospects for the development of the industry, we should not ignore the challenges we are facing. At present, the application field of wide band gap semiconductors is mainly concentrated in radio frequency devices, high-power electronic devices and optoelectronic devices, and the application field still needs to be expanded. In addition, although our country has achieved R & D and production of related products, but the speed of product iteration is slow, and there is a relative lack of evaluation system on the application side.

In the long run, cost is still an important factor in determining the industrialization of wide band gap semiconductors. With the continuous reduction of costs, industrialization will also be accelerated.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: new Research (ID:chuxinyanjiu), author: Feifei

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