Top Ten Hot Trends in Semiconductor Industry in 2022- TOP5

Third-generation semiconductor wafer factories increase 8-inch production capacity.

As the first commercial third generation semiconductor materials, silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) have attracted much attention in recent years.

By 2025, the global market for power discrete devices and modules will reach US $27.4 billion, of which the market share of SiC and GaN will increase to 17%.
Global wafer manufacturers are actively promoting the commercial use of 8-inch SiC wafers.
The manufacturing difficulties of SiC focus on substrate growth, substrate cutting and oxidation process. SiC substrate links hold the voice of the industry chain, some downstream epitaxial and device manufacturers acquire SiC substrate factories, and silicon wafer factories are also cutting into SiC substrate business.

In recent years, Cree, Infineon, SiCrystal, II-IV, Nippon Iron Holdings and Dow Corning and other manufacturers have expanded their 6-inch production lines and are actively promoting the 8-inch development of SiC.

Among them, Cree, II-VI, SiCrystal and ST already have 8-inch SiC substrate technology.
While domestic manufacturers in the SiC substrate link is from 4 inches to 6 inches upgrade, China Light and Power 55, China CRRC, San'an Optoelectronics, China Resources Microelectronics, Jita and so on have 6-inch SiC production lines.

In addition to automotive inverter, automotive OBC, slow charger, fast charging pile and so on can all use SiC products.
As a result, the current SiC capacity can not meet the market demand, and large companies lock substrate capacity ahead of time by means of production expansion / M & A. for example, Wolfspeed (owned by Cree) has signed long-term supply agreements with Infineon, ST, on Semet, SiCrystal (owned by Roma) and ST,GTAT (owned by on Semiconductor) and Infineon, respectively.

Epitaxial wafer is a very important part of GaN, and its epitaxial wafer usually uses heterogeneous substrates, such as sapphire, SiC, silicon (Si) and so on.
Theoretically, GaN homogenous substrate is the best substrate for the growth of GaN epitaxial layer, but the traditional melt method can not be used for the growth of GaN single crystal, so the growth of GaN single crystal is slow.

At present, the mainstream substrate technologies are GaN-on-Si (Silicon-based Gallium Nitride) and GaN-on-SiC (Silicon Carbide-based Gallium Nitride).
GaN-on-SiC has better performance, but the price is high, but the current size is limited to 4-6 inch wafers; GaN-on-Si grows faster and is easy to expand to 8-inch wafers, but its performance is slightly lower than that of GaN-on-SiC.

GaN-on-Si is widely used in power electronics. Foundry such as SunEdison, Shenggao, Silicon Industry Group and IDM factories such as TI, ST, Infineon, on Semet, Yingnosecco, China Resources Microelectronics and Silan Microelectronics are working on the track; GaN on SiC is suitable for RF applications, and the SiC substrate has better heat dissipation, but its wafer size is smaller, not more than 6 inches.

GaN on SiC track suppliers include Wolfspeed, Dow Corning, Roma, II-VI, Nippon Railway, Norstel (China Capital acquisition), Tianke Hedda, Shandong Tianyue and so on.

It is worth noting that on June 5, 2021, the GaN production base of Yingnosecco was officially put into production.

By the end of 2021, the production capacity of Innosecco GaN wafers will reach 6000 wafers per month. after the project is fully put into production, the annual production capacity will reach 780000, with an annual output value of more than 10 billion yuan.
We predict that GaN will accelerate its commercial use in China from 2022.
The growth of applications such as electric vehicles, 5G communications and data centers will also boost the production capacity of SiC and GaN wafers.
At present, SiC and GaN wafers are mainly limited to 4-6 inches. With the efforts of head suppliers in 8-inch wafers, the production capacity of 8-inch wafers of the third generation semiconductors will increase in 2022, and the trend of increasing 8-inch production capacity of large wafers will continue in the next few years.