The craze for building
SiC factories is still intensifying. On June 7, 2023, STMicroelectronics and San‘an jointly set up a new 8-inch SiC device joint venture manufacturing plant in Chongqing, China. This Sino foreign cooperation event has attracted extensive attention in the industry for a while. The factory is scheduled to start production in the fourth quarter of 2025 and is expected to be fully completed in 2028. After reaching production capacity, the factory can produce 10000 8-inch SiC wafers per week. It is understood that the joint venture project company will be held by San‘an Optoelectronics, tentatively named "San‘an STMicroelectronics (Chongqing) Co., Ltd.", of which Hunan San‘an, a wholly-owned subsidiary of San‘an Optoelectronics, holds 51% shares, and STMicroelectronics (China) Investment Co., Ltd. holds 49% shares. Meanwhile, San‘an Optoelectronics will establish an 8-inch SiC substrate factory as a supporting facility in the local area, with a planned investment of approximately 7 billion yuan.
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In May of this year, another SiC giant Infineon signed SiC wafer and ingot supply agreements with two Chinese SiC material suppliers, Tianke Heda and Tianyue Advanced, respectively. These agreements not only allow Infineon to diversify its SiC (SiC) material supplier system, but also ensure that Infineon obtains more competitive SiC material supplies. Infineon is focusing on increasing SiC production capacity and achieving its goal of occupying 30% of the global market share by 2030.
According to the agreement, the first phase of these two manufacturers will focus on the supply of 150mm SiC materials, which are expected to account for a double-digit share of Infineon‘s long-term demand. But two manufacturers will also provide 200mm diameter SiC materials to assist Infineon in its transition to 200mm diameter wafers.
For these European SiC giants, whether building SiC factories with Chinese manufacturers or signing substrate material contracts, it will help ensure the stability of the entire supply chain and help them meet the growing demand of Chinese customers in the most efficient way.
This also indirectly demonstrates the enormous potential of the Chinese market, reflecting the rapid rise of the domestic SiC industry. After years of accumulation and development, domestic SiC has shown great potential and prospects in materials, Foundry model and other fields.http://www.ic-bom.com/
Due to the close connection between the process and design of SiC, it is still largely IDM led business. However, the emergence of OEM factories has provided a strong backing for a group of domestic SiC participants.
In 2021, Hunan San‘an invested 2.5 billion yuan to build a SiC production line that includes long crystal, substrate fabrication, epitaxial growth, chip preparation, and packaging. Hunan San‘an is one of the few vertical industrial chain manufacturing platforms for SiC in China. Currently, the SiC production capacity has reached 12000 pieces per month. The second phase of Hunan San‘an project will be completed in 2023, and the supporting annual production capacity will reach 360000 pieces after reaching the production capacity. According to the San‘an financial report, in 2022, Hunan San‘an achieved sales revenue of 639 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 909.48%. And the total amount of signed long-term procurement agreements for SiC MOSFETs exceeds 7 billion yuan.
In addition, in the field of SiC Foundry model, there is also core Yueneng. The company plans to produce 240000 pieces of 6-inch SiC wafers annually in the first phase, which is planned to reach the production capacity by the end of December 2024. The synchronized second phase project is expected to produce 240000 pieces of 8-inch SiC wafers annually, which is expected to reach the production capacity in 2026.http://www.ic-bom.com/
More manufacturers have smelled the business opportunity of SiC OEM. On May 22, 2023, Changfei Advanced announced the official launch of its SiC wafer foundry in Wuhan. It is reported that the project has an annual output of 360000 SiC MOSFET wafers, including epitaxy, device design, wafer manufacturing, packaging, etc., and is expected to be completed by 2025.
Upstream materials are the raw materials for the SiC industry, and substrate production is also a key link in industry development, which directly determines the final cost of SiC devices. From the development trend of SiC substrate size, on the one hand, it will still move towards 8-inch SiC products, and on the other hand, 6-inch SiC products will continue to develop for a long time. Yole data shows that as of the end of 2022, approximately 80% of the 6-inch conductive substrates in the global power SiC substrate market.http://www.ic-bom.com/
Tianke Heda and Tianyue Advanced are both among the earliest companies in China to simultaneously lay out conductive SiC substrate and semi insulating SiC substrate products. According to Tianke Heda, its SiC substrate production capacity currently ranks first in China and fourth globally in the industry. Last November, the company successfully developed a new 8-inch SiC substrate product and will achieve small-scale mass production of 8-inch conductive SiC substrates by 2023.
At present, Tianyue Advanced has achieved batch supply of 6-inch conductive substrates, 6-inch semi insulating substrates, and 4-inch semi insulating substrates. According to the YOLE report, in 2022, Tianyue Advanced maintained the top three global market share in the field of semi insulating SiC substrates for four consecutive years. The production of conductive SiC substrates continued to rise, and the market share gradually increased. In 2022, Tianyue Advanced signed long-term agreements with well-known customers in the fields of automotive electronics, power electronics, and other fields both domestically and internationally, which also provided sustained momentum for its sales growth from 2023 to 2025. Meanwhile, as Shanghai Lingang Smart Factory is about to achieve mass production, it is expected that the company will gain greater market influence in the power SiC field.http://www.ic-bom.com/
With the development of domestic SiC substrate material manufacturers, foreign SiC manufacturers are feeling a certain crisis. According to Digitimes, in response to the increasingly fierce competition from Chinese competitors, European and American SiC substrate suppliers have slightly lowered prices for Asian customers.
It is understood that in addition to the two SiC substrate manufacturers mentioned above, there are also multiple SiC substrate manufacturers in China that are making breakthroughs in key technical fields, such as Shuoko Crystal, Jingsheng Electromechanical, Nansha Wafer, Tongguang Co., Ltd., Tianke Heda, Keyou Semiconductor, and Qianjing Semiconductor, which have successfully developed 8-inch SiC substrates. With the maturity of SiC substrates, it is expected that costs will further decrease, which is also an inevitable trend for the entire SiC industry.
