Capital flocks to the third generation of semiconductors: new energy "arch fire", "straight overtaking" under the opportunity risk coexist

"Now more and more companies are laying out third-generation semiconductor companies, and the purchase of related equipment is relatively tight." Recently, an LED supply chain person told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter.

Although the equipment competition is related to the supply chain shortage environment, the hot market for third-generation semiconductors (also known as wide bandgap semiconductors) can be seen. At the recent prospective analysis meeting of the new application of compound semiconductors in Jibang Consulting, Gong Ruijiao, a compound semiconductor analyst at Jibang Consulting, said: "According to our statistics, the investment scale of the entire wide bandgap semiconductor (power and RF part) reached 70.9 billion yuan last year, more than double that of the previous year. ”

At the same time, the demand for third-generation semiconductor applications is also growing, with silicon carbide (SiC) into the new energy vehicle industry chain, gallium nitride (GaN) in the large-scale application of fast charging, the third generation of semiconductors gradually into the consumer end and the industrial end, in the field of power semiconductors emerged.

It is worth mentioning that carbon neutrality and related policies are continuing to bring the development of third-generation semiconductors, and as both silicon carbide and gallium nitride help improve energy efficiency, the willingness of enterprises to invest is also increasing. On December 8, the National Development and Reform Commission and other four departments issued a new plan proposing that by 2025, data centers and 5G will basically form a green and intensive integrated operation pattern. According to the calculation of Tianfeng Securities, if the data centers around the world that use silicon chip devices are upgraded to gallium nitride power chip devices, the energy waste will be reduced by 30%-40%. GaN is currently used in 5G base stations, and many companies are laying out gallium nitride power supply products in data centers.

At present, the third generation of semiconductors is ushering in a golden period of development, but at the same time, it needs to be noted that the industry is still in its infancy, the overall scale is small, and many enterprises are pouring in, and it is more important to pay attention to the actual market demand.

Domestic exploration of "straight overtaking" will enter the integration period in the next 5 years

From the perspective of the industrial chain, the third generation of semiconductors mainly has substrates, epitaxial, design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, applications and other links, at present, foreign semiconductor companies still occupy a core position, and in the face of certain market prospects, domestic companies are also flocking to.

Among them, the LED industry cluster is an important force, because in the lighting, display and other optoelectronic devices, the original need to use gallium nitride and other materials, so Sanan Optoelectronics, HC Semitek and other enterprises have the basis of materials and processes, as well as related production experience, which is their advantage. Of course, the process difference between optoelectronic devices and power ICs is obvious, the difficulty of IC technology is upgraded, and there are challenges in the expansion of production lines.

For the layout of gallium nitride, Wang Jiangbo, vice president of HC Semitek, told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter: "In 2020, HC Semitek raised about 300 million yuan to invest in the field of GaN power electronic devices. The application market of electronic power devices and the company's deep ploughing of the optoelectronic field is different, but the material system is similar, there are certain similarities in process preparation, the process section of power electronic devices is more complex, and the requirements for line width control and equipment are higher. At present, the 6-inch silicon-based GaN power electronics process has been connected, and it is expected to launch 650V cascode products in 2022 and have mass production and FOUNDC capabilities in 2023. ”

In terms of future product planning, Wang Jiangbo said that HC Semitek is not only for the field of fast charging, but also for data centers, electric vehicles, communications and other fields.

For HC Semitek, cutting into the third generation of semiconductors on the one hand is the horizontal expansion of the industry, on the other hand, it is also in line with the company's route of exploring high-end; look at Sanan Optoelectronics, the layout is more perfect, in addition to the gallium nitride production line, this year Changsha's silicon carbide whole industry chain production line phase I put into operation.

In addition to LEDs, companies with experience in power semiconductors are also accelerating their layout, such as Wingtech Technology, which frequently drops and ships in the field of gallium nitride power devices, and its subsidiary Nexperia also cooperates with automotive companies. China Resources Micro, the domestic power semiconductor leader, actively lays out the third generation of semiconductors, has mass production of silicon carbide products, and has also developed gallium nitride devices. In the field of manufacturing, equipment manufacturers represented by North Huachuang and Zhongwei have also ushered in the incremental market of the third generation of semiconductors.

At the same time, many domestic companies focusing on third-generation semiconductors are also growing, such as Innosyco, which is growing rapidly in the field of gallium nitride power chips; basic semiconductors in the field of silicon carbide, Tianke Heda, Tianyue Advanced, Tongguang crystal, etc., and there are many companies focusing on the substrate link.

Compared with foreign countries, there is still a gap between domestic enterprises, Gong Ruijiao told reporters: "The first is the substrate of silicon carbide, overseas is currently 6 inches to 8 inches, the domestic is now 4 inches to 6 inches, there is a big gap; another overseas commercial silicon carbide uses MOS tubes, while the domestic diode is still used." ”

Some insiders pointed out that silicon carbide in China more than 100 projects, almost no car specification level, because the industry threshold is very high, the vehicle level and the industrial level, consumer level compared, the time to do reliability experiments is completely different, not an order of magnitude, it said: "The consumption level only needs dozens of hours, the industrial level to hundreds of hours, and the car level to thousands of hours, because sitting on the car, the most important thing is safety, a car factory to use a car standard level device is not three or five years is not OK." Although domestic automobile factories also cooperate with some enterprises, but to cooperate for a long time, the imported devices and chips used by domestic car factories have tight supply problems. Now there is a huge space for the localization of domestic car manufacturers, we must first achieve the same level as foreign vehicle specification chips and devices, and then develop new innovations on this basis. ”

In recent years of science and technology game, the domestic attention to the semiconductor industry is unprecedented, the third generation of semiconductors is also regarded as a direction of overtaking in the corner, in this regard, the above-mentioned industry insiders said: "In fact, when running fast in the corner, it is easy to fall, and the correct approach is to overtake in a straight line." Now the country is full of guerrillas, to overtake in a straight line to build a legion, overseas is also such a process, with the support of capital, you can integrate these guerrillas to achieve straight line overtaking. So in the next 5 years, I predict it will be an integration process. ”

Silicon carbide integration Gallium nitride started

Although compared with the silicon market, the market share of third-generation semiconductors is still very small, and now it is mainly focused on power semiconductors and other fields, but the growth space is huge.

Gong Ruijiao said that benefiting from the new energy revolution, the outbreak of downstream photovoltaics, energy storage, new energy vehicles and industrial automation, the power semiconductor industry has ushered in a new high boom cycle, "The market size of the entire power semiconductor, separation device and module will grow from 20.4 billion US dollars in 2020 to 27.4 billion US dollars in 2025, and the market size of wide bandgap semiconductors will reach nearly 17% in 2025 from less than 5% in 2020." ”

The current industrialization of the third generation of semiconductor materials is mainly concentrated in the two directions of silicon carbide and gallium nitride, of which silicon carbide has been applied for more than ten years, and the industrialization is more mature.

"We predict that the global SiC power market size will grow from $680 million in 2020 to $3.39 billion in 2025, of which new energy vehicles will become the most important driving force, SiC will achieve major applications in the main inverter, OBC, DCDC, and there are also great applications in the field of charging piles and photovoltaic energy storage outside the vehicle." In the field of photovoltaic energy storage, SiC will accelerate its penetration in the past two years, of course, it is still far from being comparable to the automobile market. Gong Ruijiao analyzed.

In the global silicon carbide market, first-tier manufacturers such as Cree, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and ROHM continue to increase their weight and enter the process of industrial chain integration competition. Gong Ruijiao said: "Infineon, ROHM and other manufacturers are extending upstream, involving the field of materials, especially the competition for SiC substrates. Mainly based on the following two reasons, the first is because of the high product added value of SiC substrate, and the second is because the technical process of SiC substrate is very complex, its crystal growth is very slow, and it has become a key constraint point for SiC wafer production capacity. In the future, we believe that the resources to obtain a SiC substrate will also become the entrance ticket to the next generation of electric vehicle power devices. ”

Looking at the gallium nitride market that has risen in recent years, based on the rise of the fast charging market, there are both emerging companies such as nano-micro semiconductors and established companies such as PI on this track. Gong Ruijiao said: "The GaN market is still in an early stage, the current rapid start in the consumer market, Apple launched a 140-watt GaN fast charge this year, we also think that GaN really needs to make a transition from consumer electronics, repeatedly verify its reliability, and then establish a production capacity and ecological pattern, convenient for later to the industrial level and vehicle standard level." In addition, the overall gaN market size will grow from $48 million in 2020 to $1.32 billion in 2025. In addition to consumer electronics, the products we think will have a lot of applications are new energy vehicles, telecommunications, and data centers. ”

In his view, with the improvement of integration, gallium nitride or IDM and vertical division of labor coexist. In IDM, except for a very small number of start-ups such as Innosyco, they are mainly traditional large factories; in the field of vertical division of labor, they are basically start-ups, and have also become the key driving force of the industry.

It is not difficult to see that in the past 5 years, the scale of the third generation of semiconductors will usher in several times the expansion, which is also reflected in the growth of equipment demand. Fang Ziwen, deputy general manager of equipment leader AIXTRON (Aisiqiang), told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter: "Many customers are actively expanding production, and overall, the third generation of semiconductors and other materials on the market has clearly grown, of which potassium nitride, silicon carbide, and indium phosphide have grown most obviously." ”

In addition, Fang Ziwen also said that due to the impact of the shortage of the global industrial chain, the current delivery cycle of related equipment has been extended from 6 months to about 8-9 months, but the overall production capacity of equipment manufacturers is sufficient.

Multiple challenges of cost, yield, and demand

Silicon carbide has more than ten years of application development, compared to gallium nitride is more mature, in the competition with silicon, due to the characteristics of the device itself, silicon carbide substitution process is more convenient, relatively speaking gallium nitride is more difficult. However, in the past two or three years, gallium nitride has been verified in the fast charging track, and after the 650-volt fast charging consumer market has risen, the industry has rapidly begun to scale, and whether the yield increase or cost reduction needs to be scaled to carry out positive circulation.

Since the silicon process is already very mature and has an advantage in the cost of a single chip, it is understood that a single device of silicon carbide or gallium nitride can be up to 4 times that of silicon. "From the perspective of the car, the cost of a single can be about twice as high, but (silicon carbide) reduces the systemic cost, such as applied to the car can reduce the volume of the car-related components, improve efficiency, and then reduce the cost of the battery, so from the perspective of the vehicle system, the cost is still reduced." Gong Ruijiao gave an example to reporters.

However, for the third generation of semiconductor companies, still facing the challenge of cost, all aspects of the industrial chain are also trying to reduce costs and increase efficiency, improve yield, a number of practitioners told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that with the advancement of mass production, costs will decline rapidly.

Among them, equipment manufacturers play an important role, "the development of the industry, the most critical is to save costs, (silicon carbide field) today compared to competitors, Aisqiang has a cost advantage of 10% to 15%, we expect to continue to reduce the cost of about 25% in 2023," Fang Ziwen said, "In the field of gallium nitride, our production costs will continue to decline by 20% to 30% by 2023, and our production capacity will increase by about 20% to 30%. ”

This is closely related to the automated production line, as we all know, the degree of automation of the silicon chip production line has been very high, the manpower factors on the production line have been reduced, and it can operate all year round, and the third generation of semiconductors will also undergo this evolutionary process. Fang Ziwen recalled: "Eight years ago, a customer said that the gallium nitride material was very good, but it could not be used, because the production line was still in the practice of manual workshops. So they put forward the requirements for us to automate the equipment, so that we can compete with the existing devices in the process flow. So we carried out the research and development of gallium nitride equipment very early, and then the fast charging market broke out and the market rose. ”

After the introduction of fully automated production mode, the third generation of semiconductors can enter the market at a lower cost, in Fang Ziwen's view, the third generation of semiconductor SiC and GaN is a very large market, and silicon directly to do competition, which requires the upstream and downstream cooperation of the industrial chain, from Performance, to the volume, end customer verification need to be well coordinated, in order to make SiC, GaN finally go, into the process of industrialization.

In the view of many people in the industry, the third generation of semiconductors in the technical level is not too big bottleneck, domestic and foreign laboratories can carry out technical research, but the most critical is mass production, which involves the team's production experience, talent composition and other factors.

In addition to production, the third generation of semiconductor companies are also facing the test of profitability and demand, and some industrial chain people told reporters: "The power device business is difficult to do, and sometimes even upside down." For example, in many commercial contracts, if there is a problem of product compensation, power device companies also need to compensate customers for lost profits, rather than the cost of the device itself, so the risk borne by the front end is larger, and some investment institutions will give priority to packaging companies to reduce risks. ”

Therefore, a number of semiconductor veterans also told reporters that for new enterprises, we must keep up with market demand, not only investment-driven development, but also need to clarify the sea and carry out differentiated industrial competition.