SiC and Gan have become key new materials supporting the development of information, energy, transportation, advanced manufacturing, national defense and other fields with the advantages of efficient photoelectric conversion ability, excellent high-frequency power characteristics, stable high-temperature performance and low energy loss. SiC and Gan are called the twin males of the third generation semiconductor materials.
Compared with silicon devices, GaN has achieved a leap in power conversion efficiency and power density. Gan has excellent breakdown ability, higher electron density and speed, and higher operating temperature. Gan has a wide energy gap of 3.4ev. It is widely used in terminal fields such as power adapter, photovoltaic inverter or solar inverter, server and communication power supply.
SiC has wide band gap, high breakdown electric field, high thermal conductivity, high electron saturation rate and higher radiation resistance. It is very suitable for making high temperature, high frequency, radiation resistance and high power devices.
SiC and Gan can make the whole power module smaller, faster, more reliable and more efficient. This will reduce the mass, volume and life cycle cost of power electronic components, allow the equipment to work at higher temperature, voltage and frequency, so that electronic devices can achieve higher performance with less energy.
Their application fields cover most emerging application markets with broad development prospects, such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaic, locomotive traction, smart grid, energy-saving household appliances, communication RF and so on.
According to the report of MCMs consulting, in 2018, more than 20 automobile manufacturers will use SiC Schottky diodes or SiC MOSFET in OBC. In the future, SiC power semiconductors are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44% in the OBC market to 2023.
Maims continued to point out that in the future, more and more automobile manufacturers will use SiC Power Semiconductors in the main inverter, especially Chinese automobile manufacturers, have considered using SiC Power Components in recent years. Therefore, from 2017 to 2023, the CAGR of SiC Power Components in the main inverter market is more likely to be as high as 108%.
At present, the third generation semiconductor devices are mainly concentrated in Europe, America and Japan, mainly including Texas Instruments, Infineon, ansenmey, Renesas and Toshiba. However, domestic enterprises have been accelerating their R & D layout. For example, in June 2017, easyt cooperated with the national rail transit electrification and automation engineering technology research center of Southwest Jiaotong University to jointly carry out R & D Based on key technologies such as third-generation semiconductor (gallium nitride, silicon carbide) devices, on-board auxiliary inverter, distributed power application and power electronic transformer.
