Recently, news about IGBT shortage and price increase frequently broke out. Since the shortage of core in the previous year, IGBT, as one of the main products of power semiconductors, has been in short supply, which continues to this day. Even when most other chip products have high inventory due to supply and demand reversal, the supply situation of IGBT has not improved.
IGBT is a compound power semiconductor device composed of bipolar triode (BJT) and MOSFET. It has the advantages of high input impedance of MOSFET and low on-resistance of BJT. It has high input impedance, high withstand voltage and low on-voltage drop, and is very suitable for converter systems with DC voltage of 600V and above, such as new energy vehicles, frequency converters, switching power supplies, lighting circuits, AC motors and so on.
According to the data of "2023 Q1 Chip Market Report" released by FUTURE ELECTRONICS on February 17, 2023, the IGBT delivery time of STMICEOELECTRONICS, MICROSEMI, INFINEON and other power semiconductor manufacturers is basically consistent with the delivery time in the fourth quarter of 2022, with the longest time of 54 weeks, which is still tight. Ye Zhengxian, chairman of MOTECH a solar cell manufacturer, said when talking about the shortage of IGBT: "It is not a question of how high the price is, but that it cannot be bought at all."
IGBT chips
Li Guoqiang, research director of ICWISE, pointed out: "The main reason for the shortage of IGBT in this round is that with the rise of new energy vehicles, the demand for high voltage has increased greatly, and IGBT has become the focus of industrial development." It is reported that the number of IGBT used in an electric vehicle is as high as hundreds, which is seven to ten times that of traditional fuel vehicles. At the same time, automotive IGBT manufacturers such as INFINEON and ONSEML are not expanding production in time, which is not enough for the market to meet the increased demand. In addition, in the fields of photovoltaic power generation and industrial inverters, the usage of IGBT continues to rise. Li Guoqiang expects that the current IGBT shortage will continue for some time, and the supply situation will not reverse at least until the first half of next year.
With the continuous shortage of IGBT supply and demand, the topic of replacing silicon-based IGBT with wide band gap semiconductor material silicon carbide is also heating up. According to TRENDFORCE, the market output value of silicon carbide power devices is expected to reach 5.33 billion US dollars by 2026. Mainstream applications still rely on electric vehicles and renewable energy. The output value of electric vehicles can reach 3.98 billion US dollars, with a compound annual growth rate of about 38%; Renewable energy reached US $410 million, with a compound annual growth rate of about 19%.
In this regard, Cao Yanfei, senior vice president of INFINEON and head of Greater China of Automotive Electronics Division, said that with the development of silicon carbide, more and more customers are laying out and establishing projects, especially on high-voltage main inverters such as 800V. Silicon-based devices such as IGBT will coexist with silicon carbide devices for a long time. At present, the proportion of silicon-based devices is still high, but the medium and long-term development of silicon carbide is still very promising.
New energy vehicles drive high voltage demand to soar IGBT shortage or last until the first half of next year-China exportsemi.com
