Power Electronics Europe April/May Issue 2022

MARKET NEWS 7 www.power-mag.com Issue 2 2022 Power Electronics Europe II?VI Incorporated announced that it is accelerating its investment in 150 mm and 200 mm SiC substrate and epitaxial wafer manufacturing with large-scale factory expansions in Easton, Pennsylvania, and Kista, Sweden. This is part of the Company’s previously announced $1 billion investment in SiC over the next 10 years. The global urgency to decarbonize energy consumption is accelerating the “electrification of everything” and driving a sea change in power electronics technology with the adoption of SiC. To meet the accelerating global demand for SiC power electronics, II-VI will significantly build out its nearly 300,000 square foot factory in Easton, to scale up the production of its state-of-the-art 150 mm and 200 mm SiC substrates and epitaxial wafers. Easton’s 150 mm and 200 mm SiC substrate output is expected to reach the equivalent of 1 million 150 mm substrates annually by 2027, with the proportion of 200 mm substrates growing over time. The expansion of the epitaxial wafer capacity in Kista is aimed at serving the European market. “Our customers are accelerating their plans to intersect the anticipated tidal wave of demand for SiC power electronics in electric vehicles that we expect will come right behind the current adoption cycle in industrial, renewable energy, datacenters, and more,” said Sohail Khan, Executive VP. “The Easton factory will increase II-VI’s production of SiC substrates by at least a factor of six over the next five years, and it will also become II-VI’s flagship manufacturing center for 200 mm SiC epitaxial wafers, one of the largest in the world.” The Easton factory will be powered by an uninterruptible and scalable microgrid based on fuel-cell technology to provide high assurance of supply. II-VI will leverage its industry-leading epitaxial wafer technology developed in Kista. This technology is differentiated by its ability to achieve thick layer structures in single or multiple regrowth steps, which is suited for power devices in applications above 1 kV. https://ii-vi.com/ II-VI Accelerates SiC Substrate and Epitaxy Investments in the USA and Sweden China’s Share of Global Wafer Capacity Climbs T he new 2022 edition of Global Wafer Capacity from Knometa Research shows that China’s share of the world’s capacity for fabricating IC wafers continued to grow in 2021. The country ended the year having 16 % of global capacity, based on normalized installed monthly capacity amounts. Worldwide IC wafer capacity at the end of 2021 was 21.6 million 200 mm-equivalent wafers per month, with fabs in China having the capacity to process 3.5 million. China’s share of capacity has increased one percentage point in each of the last two years and a total of seven points since 2011, when the country accounted for just 9 % of all IC wafer capacity. A report published by the SIA and Boston Consulting Group in 2021 showed that the cost of building and operating a fab in China is lower than in any other nation . As a result, fab capacity is expanding faster in China than anywhere else. Roughly half of all IC wafer capacity in China is controlled by foreign companies. In fact, some of the largest fabs in the country are owned by SK Hynix, Samsung, TSMC, and UMC. SK Hynix alone controls 17 % of China’s capacity, and that does not count Intel’s NAND flash fab in Dalian that SK Hynix is in the process of acquiring. Ownership of the fab was transferred to SK Hynix in December 2021, but Intel will continue to run it until March 2025. As projected in Global Wafer Capacity 2022, China’s share of global IC wafer capacity is expected to reach nearly 19 % by 2024. While SK Hynix, TSMC, and UMC are expanding their existing fabs in China, most of the new fabs under construction in the country are owned by domestic entities. https://knometa.com Chinese GaN Company Enters Europe and USA After chargers for handhelds Notebook manufacturers are also interested in using GaN power devices, making the GaN power market the fastest rising category in the third-generation semiconductor industry. Trenforce estimates that revenue will reach $83 million in 2021, with an annual growth rate of up 73 %. The Chinese manufacturer Innoscience has risen to 20 % market share in 2021, jumping to the third place mainly due to the substantial increase in high and low voltage GaN product shipments. Founded in December 2015, Innoscience is an Integrated Device Manufacture (IDM) that is focused on GaN technology. The company has two wafer fabs including dedicated 8-inch GaN-on-Si site, featuring the latest high- throughput manufacturing equipment. Currently the company has a capacity of 10,000 8-inch wafers per month which will ramp up to 14,000 8-inch wafers per month later this year and 70,000 8-inch wafers per month by 2025. The company has a wide portfolio of devices from 30 V to 650 V and has shipped more than 35 million parts for use in applications including USB PD chargers/adapters, data centers, mobile phones and LED drivers. In February the company announced the opening of subsidaries in Leuven/Belgium and the US Bay area (see PEE 1-2022, page 9) and also the INN40W08, a 40 V bi-directional GaN-on-Si e-mode HEMT for mobile devices, including laptops and cellular phones. Featuring a bi-directional blocking capability, the new INN40W08 GaN HEMTs have a ultra-low on resistance of just 7.8 m Ω . This is achieved by the company’s advanced