Ralf’s GaN & SiC News (August 4, 2023)
Welcome to the latest edition of my newsletter on #siliconcarbide and #galliumnitride. If you want to contribute to it, please reach out to me via [email protected]
By significantly expanding its Kulim fab – over and above the original investment announced in February 2022 – 英飞凌 will build the world’s largest 200-millimeter SiC Power Fab. Over the next five years Infineon will additionally invest up to five billion euros during a second construction phase for Module Three.
This is the biggest single investment in SiC manufacturing, as Wolfspeed 's Saarfab is some €3 billion, and the second biggest investment of Infineon next to Module 4 in Dresden which was started to be built end of May 2023.
Infineon's new investment should lead to an annual SiC revenue potential of about seven billion euros by the end of the decade, together with the planned 200-millimeter SiC conversion of Villach and Kulim. This highly competitive manufacturing base will support Infineon’s SiC market share target of 30% towards the end of the decade. Infineon is confident that the company’s SiC revenue in the fiscal year 2025 will come in ahead of the target of one billion euros.
Infineon has been awarded new design wins of about five billion euros along with about one billion euros in prepayments from existing and new customers: In the automotive sector this includes six OEMs, three of them from China. Among the customers are 福特 , 上汽集团 and CHERY . In the area of renewable energies customers include SolarEdge Technologies and three leading Chinese photovoltaic and energy storage systems companies.?In addition, Infineon and 施耐德电气 agreed on a capacity reservation?including prepayments for?power products based on silicon and silicon carbide. Infineon and the respective customers will provide more details in separate announcements in the near future. The prepayments will contribute positively to Infineon’s cash flow in the coming years and shall be fully repaid in connection with the agreed sales volumes by 2030 at the latest.
Silicon Carbide News
Megers and acquisitions (M&As) are also occurring in China's SiC industry. In 2022, over 26 SiC companies raised more than $223.59 million. In the first half of 2023, the amount surged to over $1.19 billion in more than 25 SiC companies, setting a new record. They cover epitaxy, substrate, devices, and equipment, according to a report by 爱集微咨询（厦门）有限公司 . Investment experts predict that in the next three to five years, it is highly possible that SiC M&As will keep at three to four cases each year.
Ding Guojiao, director of Field Application Management at 安富利 , emphasized that in addition to EV, SiC has the potential to be applied in any high-power and high-voltage scenarios, such as hydrogen energy vehicle DC-DC converters, high-speed rails, high-voltage flexible transmission, and charging piles. “Furthermore, with the development of artificial intelligence, there is a growing demand for high-speed computing in cloud and edge computing, data centers, and other high-power and highly efficient power systems, which will also provide many opportunities for SiC,” Ding added.
“The competition in SiC is still in its infancy in China, and many companies have chosen SiC as a new direction or are expanding SiC production lines,” Shi Yin, a researcher at the 中国科学院 Semiconductor Institute, pointed out. Chinese companies should not miss this opportunity and should fully leverage the benefits of M&As to get ahead.
In fact, such cases had occurred as early as 2016 when An Xin Capital acquired Swedish SiC substrate company Norstel AB , and then Xiamen-based 三安光电股份有限公司 acquired it from An Xin in 2020. This allowed Sanan to successfully extend its business scope from SiC devices to SiC crystal growth and substrate manufacturing. Although the cases are still rare in China, large-scale mergers and reorganizations are inevitable in the future as more capital and companies enter this field.
U.S.-based Silicon Power Corporation will invest 10 billion rupees ($121.73 million) to set up a facility in India's #Odisha state to make 150-millimeter silicon carbide, the state's chief minister's office said. The investment will be made by the group's Indian unit, RIR Power Electronics Limited (Formerly Known as RUTTONSHA) , and the company has committed to start operations in the next 18 to 24 months, the chief minister's office said in a statement.
The local chip market is estimated to be worth $80 billion by 2028, almost four times its $23 billion size now, with India aiming to establish itself as a semiconductor manufacturing hub rivalling the likes of Taiwan.
安森美半导体 and 麦格纳国际 announced a long-term supply agreement for Magna to integrate onsemi’s EliteSiC intelligent power solutions into its eDrive systems. Simultaneously, the companies entered a separate agreement for Magna to also invest approximately $40 million for the procurement of new SiC equipment at onsemi’s New Hampshire and Czech Republic facilities to ensure access to future supply.
“We believe that a secure supply of silicon carbide chips will be critical to our ability to continue delivering innovative and efficient eDrive systems for our customers. Accordingly, we are both investing to grow SiC production capacity, and establishing the commercial basis for long-term supply of SiC-based chips to advance our electrification strategy and outpace the competition,” said Diba Ilunga, President MAGNA Powertrain / Engineering Center Steyr GmbH & Co KG .
瑞萨电子 announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2023 on July 27. Shuhei Shinkai , senior vice president and chief financial officer, said that the company has paid US$1 billion to Wolfspeed and the other half will be paid next year and onward. Renesas used its cash to make the payment. Mass production of the SiC semiconductor is slated to start in 2025.
Shibata said Renesas will make SiC investment step by step. It plans to ship out six-inch samples to customers starting in the third quarter of 2023. Once the customers are satisfied, Renesas will be able to progress to eight-inch and more. That is probably when the company will make another large investment, he added.
According to Shinkai, Renesas plans to resume its Kofu plant in Japan in 2024. Mass production of power semiconductors on 300mm wafers is expected to begin at the facility in 2025. He also said there will be an expansion of production at the Kofu plant.
“ 安森美半导体 delivered another excellent quarter, ahead of guidance on revenue and earnings per share, driven by growth in automotive and industrial”, said Hassane El-Khoury , president and chief executive officer. “Our brownfield capacity expansion is creating an opportunity for onsemi to gain share in silicon carbide by capitalizing on the rapidly accelerating demand for electrification and renewable energy.”
The company's overall revenue was $2,094.4 million, which is flat year-over-year. But SiC revenue grew nearly four times year-over-year.
Gallium Nitride News
Frank B?senberg , managing director of Silicon Saxony , has published a commentary on how the special export licenses for #gallium and #germanium from #China, which started this week, will affect the production of microelectronics in #Germany and beyond, especially for gallium.
He draws the conclusion that at the moment one hangs in the primary production of gallium quasi at the Chinese drip, for which now also a regulator was installed. How hard will be regulated, remains to be seen. In the sense of the much-invoked de-risking, appropriate capacities should now be built up again as quickly as possible outside China. In the sense of the economic efficiency consideration thereby at least a coordinated co-operation between the USA and Europe would be desirable.
领英推荐
In the second instalment in the tutorial series of Cambridge GaN Devices Ltd , Prof. Florin Udrea, co-founder and CTO of the company, takes a deep dive into current architectures of GaN, and give prospects of future concepts of GaN.
In this webinar, the following topics are discussed:
To ensure that bidirectional charging can be used on a broad scale, Fraunhofer IAF , the University of Stuttgart , Bosch Research and Ambibox GmbH have now taken up this challenge in the recently launched the three-year research project “#GaN4EmoBiL — GaN power semiconductors for electromobility and system integration through bidirectional charging.” The consortium’s goal is to demonstrate an intelligent and cost-effective bidirectional charging system using new semiconductor devices, device concepts and system components.
To integrate as many batteries as possible bidirectionally, the cost, efficiency and compactness of charging solutions must be significantly improved. For this purpose, the project partners are researching new semiconductor solutions as a first step. They want to realize a new cost-effective GaN technology on alternative substrates (for example sapphire), which enables low-cost and efficient 1200 V transistors. On this basis, they are developing new system components (bidirectional charging cable and charger) and investigating their reliability for significantly increased operating hours.
As data centers continue to power internet searches, support video calls and store the world’s information, they’re face increasing demand for faster, more powerful processing. With limited space to expand, engineers are challenged to make existing servers more efficient.
台达电子 sought to combine their power electronics expertise with an industry leader to develop a more energy-efficient enterprise server power-supply design. The company chose 德州仪器 based on highly integrated GaN technology and its manufacturing processes.
By leveraging the power of GaN, Delta’s solution offers overall power cost reductions and an 80% improvement in power density with 1% better efficiency — up to 98% — for data centers, compared to solutions using a traditional architecture. A 1% improvement equals 1 megawatt (the equivalent of a yearly energy use of 800 households) total cost of ownership savings per data center, according to Energy Innovation.
Alex Lidow , former CEO of International Rectifier and current CEO of EPC - Efficient Power Conversion , is one of the few individuals to have pioneered two revolutionary power semiconductor technologies – the silicon power MOSFET and the gallium nitride HEMT. I had the unique privilege of asking him how to get these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities twice.
Rob Gwynne , CEO of QPT , has recorded a series of videos to explain the benefits of the proprietary approach the company is taking to take full advantage of GaN technology.
In the second video, he discusses the thermal challenges of unleashing the full potential of GaN transistors when running them at their maximum switching speeds, at high power.
To ensure the quality, robustness and long-term reliability of #PowiGaN Technology, Power Integrations puts its #PowiGaN-based products through a series of rigorous tests. Learn about them in this new video with Vice President of Marketing and Applications Engineering Douglas Bailey .
Miscellaneous News
Mitsubishi Electric announced that it has taken an equity position in novel crystal technology , a Japanese company that develops and sells gallium-oxide wafers, a promising candidate for use in superior energy-saving power semiconductors that Mitsubishi Electric intends to develop at an accelerated pace in support of global decarbonization. Recent advances have been achieved with SiC and gallium-nitride wafers, but gallium-oxide wafers are expected to help achieve even higher breakdown voltages and lower power dissipation.
Mitsubishi Electric now expects to accelerate its development of superior energy-saving gallium-oxide power semiconductors by combining its own expertise in the design and manufacture of low-energy-loss, high-reliability power semiconductors with Novel Crystal Technology's expertise in the production of gallium-oxide wafers.
The 36th International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD) takes place in the concert hall Die Glocke, Bremen, Germany, June 2–6, 2024. #ISPSD is the premier forum for technical discussion in all areas of power semiconductor devices, power integrated circuits, their hybrid technologies, and applications. With an annual attendance of (pre-COVID-19) about 500 engineers, scientists and students on average, ISPSD has become the must-go event in power semiconductors. It is a truly international conference, rotating on a four-year cycle amongst Europe, North America, Japan and Other Areas.
The Call for Papers has started. Abstract submission deadline is December 4, 2023. The conference will be chaired by Prof. Nando Kaminski ( University of Bremen ) and Prof. Ulrike Grossner ( 瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院 ).
Thanks for the mention and the (as always) very interesting newsletter!