Silicon carbide (SiC) is a leader in semiconductor materials, with the characteristics of large band-gap, high thermal stability, and high electron saturation rate, so it has a wide application prospect in power electronics, radio frequency devices and other fields. Driven by the rapid development of new energy vehicles, photovoltaic and other applications, the silicon carbide track continues to be hot, the international factory production capacity is accelerating expansion, actively layout the it’s market, and scrambling to increase production expansion. At the same time, domestic silicon carbide also follows the pace of accelerated construction, and plans to accelerate from industrialization to commercialization.
SiC wafer
The layout of international giants
In the global pattern of the silicon carbide market, overseas enterprises occupy a dominant position due to early investment and technological research and development advantages. At present, the market share is mainly dominated by Wolfspeed, II-VI, ON Mei in the United States, ST and Infineon in Europe, and Rohm, Mitsubishi, Fuji Electric and other manufacturers in Japan.
China’s silicon carbide industry chain is catching up
China has made remarkable progress in the fields of new energy vehicles, solar energy and wind energy, and silicon carbide is widely used as a key material in the field of power electronics for new energy vehicles, solar cells and wind power generation equipment. At the same time, with the continuous development of China’s manufacturing industry, the application of it in metallurgy, chemical industry, semiconductor manufacturing and other industrial fields is also increasing.
Data show that the market size of China’s silicon carbide industry has shown a rapid rise, and the market size of it in 2022 is about 4.345 billion yuan, and the output value is about 2.043 billion yuan.
Not only the international giants “horse racing”, domestic enterprises are not willing to lag behind, have the layout of silicon carbide, expand production capacity, trying to compete for market share with domestic alternatives, improve the value or shipment of products.
It is reported that more than 40 it related projects in China have made new progress, including signing landing, new production lines, capacity climbing, etc., of which about 10 companies have made breakthroughs in the field of 8-inch silicon carbide substrate.
Downstream demand continues to expand, 10 billion market space can be expected
In the future, with the increase of the penetration rate of silicon carbide devices in new energy vehicles, energy, industry, communications and other fields, the market size of it devices is expected to continue to expand, of which new energy vehicles and photovoltaic are important fields.
In the application field of it power devices, new energy vehicles are the largest application market in the future. SiC car is the trend of The Times, the world has a number of car companies a number of models using SiC, in 2018 Tesla took the lead in the Model3 with SiC, from then on kicked off the large-scale silicon carbide car, NiO, BYD, Geely, Hyundai Motor and other car companies have followed up, With the first-mover advantage and the sales of major models such as Model3 and ModelY, Tesla has become the main role of SiC loading.
With the continuous listing of hot models such as BYD Han EV, NIO ES6, Ideal L9, SiC loading volume has been further expanded. It is reported that from January to May 2023, SiC models exceeded 1 million.
With the rapid growth of photovoltaic inverter shipments and the increase in the penetration rate of silicon carbide power devices, the photovoltaic it’s power device market will grow rapidly and the prospect is bright.
With the acceleration of 5G construction, the semi-insulated it device market is expected to continue to grow. Semi-insulated silicon carbide devices are mainly used in 5G base stations, satellite communications, radar and other directions, especially the promotion of Massive MIMO technology, and the market scale of semi-insulated it gallium nitride devices will continue to expand. Data show that the market size of gallium nitride RF devices packaged in 2020 is about 891 million US dollars, of which more than 99% are using silicon carbide substrates, and by 2026, this part of the market is expected to grow to 2.222 billion US dollars, a compound annual growth rate of 17%.
