The market is unprecedentedly prosperous, and the silicon carbide industry attracts much anticipated

As the cornerstone of information technology industry, the contradiction between supply and demand of advanced semiconductor materials has become increasingly prominent under the background of increasingly turbulent international situation. Nowadays, after several generations of changes, the third generations semiconductor materials represented by silicon carbide and gallium nitride have gradually entered the stage of accelerated industrialization. Under the current background, silicon carbide has become the frontier of semiconductor technology research and the focus of industrial competition, and the United States, Japan, Europe and other countries are actively carrying out strategic deployment.

Silicon carbide has become the focus of competition in the semiconductor field

Silicon carbide is an inorganic substance and chemical formula is SiC, which is synthesized by heating reaction in a special resistance furnace with natural silica, carbon, sawdust and industrial salt as basic synthetic raw materials. Compared with the previous two generations of semiconductor materials, devices made of silicon carbide have good heat resistance, voltage resistance and extremely low conduction energy loss, which is an ideal material for manufacturing high-voltage power devices and high-power RF devices. Therefore, it is also called the breakthrough third generation semiconductor material, and its downstream applications include new energy, photovoltaic, energy storage, communication and other fields.

As one of the four most important new inventions in the 20th century, semiconductor is also the carrier of integrated circuits and chips in the 21st century, and its importance is goes without saying. Life ranges from mobile phones and computers to electronic products and equipment such as automobiles and mobile communications. As an important part of the upper and middle reaches of the semiconductor industry chain, semiconductor materials naturally play a key role in the manufacturing of semiconductor products.

With the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution, a large number of new technologies need to be realized by chips. However, in the past few decades, China's semiconductor materials are over-reliant on imports, and the self-sufficient semiconductor industry has limited the development of China's information technology industry. With the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality entering a critical stage of advancement, the position of advanced semiconductor materials in many key new materials has gradually become prominent.

In this context, the third generations semiconductors, represented by silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), have the characteristics of high voltage resistance, high temperature resistance and low loss, which meet the application requirements of current power semiconductor devices and are gradually growing into a new track with market focus.

Since the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, promoting the development of semiconductor field has been explicitly written into the plan in China. During the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the release of a series of promoting policies around the new generation of semiconductors, silicon carbide and other materials shows that silicon carbide industry will become one of the strategic industries of the country in the future.

Material characteristics open up huge market space for silicon carbide

Why does silicon carbide receive such strong attention? The answer is mainly reflected in three aspects: First, SiC has the advantages of wide band gap, high breakdown electric field and radiation resistance, which can reduce the energy consumption of downstream products and reduce the terminal volume. Secondly, the high thermal conductivity of silicon carbide helps the device to cool down quickly, so that the silicon carbide device can run at a higher temperature. At the same time, the high thermal conductivity helps the device to cool down quickly, so that downstream enterprises can simplify the cooling system of the device terminal and make the device lightweight. Thirdly, silicon carbide has high energy conversion efficiency, which will not decrease with the increase of frequency. The working frequency of silicon carbide devices can reach 10 times that of silicon-based devices, and the total energy loss of silicon carbide-based MOSFET with the same specification is only 30% of that of silicon-based IGBT.

Silicon carbide has superior performance, so its industrial chain involves many complex technical links, including silicon carbide powder, silicon carbide ingot, silicon carbide substrate, silicon carbide epitaxy, silicon carbide wafer, silicon carbide chip and silicon carbide device packaging. Among them, substrate manufacturing is the link with the highest technical barrier and the largest value in silicon carbide industry chain, and it is the core material of newly developed wide band gap semiconductors, accounting for nearly 50%.

Silicon carbide substrates can be divided into conductive substrates and semi-insulating substrates according to resistivity. Power semiconductor devices made by growing SiC substrates on conductive substrates can be applied to high-voltage working scenes such as new energy vehicles, power grids, photovoltaic inverters and rail transit. Microwave RF devices fabricated by growing GaN epitaxy on semi-insulating substrates are mainly used in RF switches, power amplifiers, filters and other communication scenarios, which can meet the requirements of 5G communication for high frequency performance and highly power processing performance.

On the whole, the characteristics of silicon carbide material determine that it will gradually replace the traditional silicon base and open up a huge market space. Silicon carbide materials will gradually replace silicon in the fields of high temperature and high frequency, and play an important role in the fields of 5G communication, aerospace, new energy vehicles and smart grid.

An important node to realize domestic autonomy in the semiconductor field

As mentioned above, semiconductor devices based on silicon carbide materials can be used in many industrial fields such as automobiles, charging equipment, portable power supplies, communication equipment, mechanical arms, aircraft and so on. Specific to the automotive application field, the application of silicon carbide to new energy vehicles can reduce loss, reduce module volume and weight, and improve endurance. With the development of new energy vehicle technology, the requirements of high efficiency, high power and high density are put forward for power devices. Benefiting from the heavy volume of new energy vehicles, the market share of silicon carbide devices will usher in explosive growth in the field of new energy vehicles.

According to Yole data, driven by the huge demand of new energy automobile industry and the improvement of efficiency and power consumption requirements in photovoltaic wind power and charging piles, it is estimated that the market size of silicon carbide power devices will reach 6.297 billion US dollars by 2027, with a compound growth rate of about 34% from 2021 to 2027.

Nevertheless, the third-generation semiconductors in China are still in the early stage of development. Although the downstream demand is extremely strong, the upstream substrate supply is constrained by equipment embargo, scarce supply of production consumables and immature process, which makes it difficult for domestic substrate enterprises to ship products and high costs. The further localization of the upstream supply chain of silicon carbide substrate is not only the key to reduce costs and increase efficiency of mainstream substrate enterprises at present, but also the key to whether more industry players can enter the market at a low threshold and jointly expand the market in the future.

In this regard, domestic manufacturers are actively deploying and focusing on finding breakthrough space in the device market. Downstream manufacturers have higher requirements for the stability of silicon carbide devices, and the verification period is longer. Domestic manufacturers have a slow cut-in process and the existing scale is relatively small. However, with the continuous high prosperity of downstream application fields such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, energy storage and smart grid, domestic manufacturers represented by SILAN Microelectronics, STARPOWER Semiconductor, CHR Micro and SANAN Optoelectronics continue to lay out silicon carbide device production lines and actively seek breakthrough space. Other domestic silicon carbide device companies mainly include CRRC Times Electric, ZHENHUA Technology, Global Power, XINYUENENG and so on.

People gather firewood with a high flame, and the third generations semiconductor materials are inextricably linked with the national economy and people's livelihood and national security. At the same time, China is no longer the past China. Under the new environment, new situation, new challenges and new opportunities, it is bound to strive for the upper reaches, win this industrial highland, and no longer be strangled by other countries. It is just around the corner to realize domestic independence in the semiconductor field.

The market space is unprecedentedly prosperous, and the silicon carbide industry attracts much attention-China exportsemi.com