Abstract
Recent developments in SiC MOSFETs and other switches open the door of new
coming applications. With the latest Rohm announcement of Ron = 3.1 mĦ.cm2,
MOSFETs are coming out the labs strug-gling with best silicon trench-MOS
currently available. It is now possible to envisage full-SiC power mod-ules.
Others challengers on MOSFETs are Mitsubishi Electric, Denso, Philips,
Semisouth, ...
This will go with the implementation of new SiC-based converters and
inverters. SiC will allow a dramatic reduction in size and weight along with
an improvement of power conversion. Electric motor drivers are the first seen
applications in both the industry and the hybrid automotive fields. In 2016, 5
millions hybrid cars could benefit from SiC devices. First power-module
prototypes are going out of R&D labs, as shown by Kansai Electric and Cree or
MELCO. Solar and wind power players are starting to look at these compo-nents
as well.
2005 has seen the involvement of new players in SiC power devices business
like Rohm, Inter- national Rectifier, ST Microelectronics, and Philips in
collaboration with Chalmers University.
Even if SiC Schottky diodes are offering sharp im-provements over
silicon-based diodes, it deals with a complete re-design of the power supply.
This leads to a slow market penetration, starting with high-end devices and
now migrating to mid-end appli-cations. We forecast the devices market will
reach about $50M by 2010 for the Schottky business. The target price for such
a component is expected to decrease down to 0.2$/Amp but the current level is
still laying at ~0.45$/Amp. We forecast PFC will handle a ~$100M SiC devices
market in 2012.
We expect that PFC manufacturers will then jump massively on this technique,
marketing new SiC-based products. We set this high CAGR curve to start by 2009
targeting a total accessible market of 1.2 billion PFC units in 2006.
Apart from regular silicon diodes, few competing SiC materials exist today for
these applications. However a GaN-based Schottky diode has been recently
intro-duced. The learning curve for this product has to be kept into
investigation but we are confident with SiC monopoly for the next 3-5 years.
The introduction of 4" wafers will help to reach this target, allowing the use
of regular semiconductor capi-tal equipment. 2007 should see the introduction
of 4" SiC at production level. Coupled with the reduction of micropipes
density, now close to 0, both parameters will impact positively the
productivity of such a compo-nent.
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