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The industry's first 300mm silicon carbide substrate has been introduced.

Update time : 2024-11-15 15:10:26

On November 13th, Tianyue Advanced, a major Chinese manufacturer of silicon carbide substrates, launched the industry's first 300mm (12-inch) silicon carbide substrate product at the Semicon Europe 2024 held in Munich, Germany. This marks that it has officially stepped into a new era of ultra-large-sized silicon carbide substrates.

Tianyue Advanced stated that the 300mm silicon carbide substrate material can further expand the area available for chip manufacturing on a single wafer, greatly increasing the yield of qualified chips. Under the same production conditions, it can significantly boost production, reduce the unit cost, and further enhance economic benefits, thus making it possible for silicon carbide materials to be applied on a larger scale.

Current Situation of Silicon Carbide Substrates: The 12-inch Ones Are Emerging While the 8-inch Ones Are Accelerating Their Penetration
The global market for silicon carbide substrates is highly competitive, with international enterprises like Wolfspeed, Infineon, ST, and ON Semiconductor occupying the dominant positions in the industry. In China, currently, Tianyue Advanced has mastered the production technology for 12-inch silicon carbide substrates, which are the largest in the industry, and has already achieved stable mass production of 8-inch silicon carbide substrates. Besides Tianyue Advanced, companies such as Luoke Crystal, Tongguang Crystal, and Tianke Heda also possess the production capacity for 8-inch silicon carbide substrates. Additionally, some other enterprises have also made arrangements and carried out research and development in the field of silicon carbide substrates, yet they may not have achieved mass production of 8-inch or larger-sized substrates.

The industry believes that the 8-inch silicon carbide substrate will be the turning point size where the marginal cost starts to decline. In the future, the 8-inch one will become the mainstream size of silicon carbide substrates. At present, the 8-inch silicon carbide substrates are only supplied in small batches. According to previous data from TrendForce, a market research firm, the market share of 8-inch products is less than 2%, and it is predicted that the market share will grow to around 15% by 2026.

Recently, there has been news in the domestic 8-inch silicon carbide market in China: The second-phase project of the construction of Tianke Heda's Third-generation Semiconductor Silicon Carbide Substrate Industrialization Base has started; Crystal Growth Equipment, Inc. has developed an 8-inch silicon carbide single crystal furnace using the resistance method.

On November 12th, the second-phase project of the construction of Tianke Heda's Third-generation Semiconductor Silicon Carbide Substrate Industrialization Base started. The company plans to purchase process equipment for crystal growth and its accessories, crystal processing, and wafer processing, build 6 - 8-inch silicon carbide substrate production lines and a research and development center, as well as relevant supporting facilities. According to the introduction, the project is aimed at expanding the company's production capacity for silicon carbide crystals and wafers. Meanwhile, the research and development center will be built to continuously optimize and improve the production processes and parameters. After the project is put into operation, it will achieve an annual production of approximately 371,000 conductive silicon carbide substrates, including 236,000 6-inch conductive silicon carbide substrates and 135,000 8-inch conductive silicon carbide substrates.

Crystal Growth Equipment, Inc. has successfully developed an 8-inch silicon carbide single crystal furnace using the resistance method, solving the bottleneck problem of the "blind box growth" of silicon carbide and realizing the visualization and monitoring of the crystal growth process. The 8-inch silicon carbide crystal growth equipment of Crystal Growth Equipment, Inc. has completed verification and started the process of mass delivery. The company is actively making arrangements for the development of silicon carbide epitaxial and cutting equipment to further expand its product line.

Goal of Silicon Carbide Substrates: Moving Towards Ultra-Large Sizes
With the rapid development of industries such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaic energy storage and other clean energy sectors, 5G communication, and high-voltage smart grids, the demand for silicon carbide-based devices that can meet working conditions like high power, high voltage, and high frequency has witnessed explosive growth. Among them, the silicon carbide substrate, as a key upstream material, is of particular importance. The industry has pointed out that the larger the size of the silicon carbide substrate is, the larger its area will be, which means that more chips can be manufactured on a single substrate, thus improving production efficiency. Meanwhile, large-sized substrates can reduce edge waste and help lower the cost per chip.

In terms of the size of silicon carbide substrates, 4-inch substrates are mainly used to manufacture gallium nitride radio frequency devices and so on; 6-inch substrates are currently the mainstream product specification in the conductive silicon carbide market. For 8-inch substrates, industry-leading companies like Wolfspeed and Infineon have successfully developed and built production lines for 8-inch products. Compared with 6-inch substrates, 8-inch substrates can offer higher energy efficiency and lower costs. As for 12-inch substrates, they are not yet widely used at present. The industry claims that with the continuous progress of technology and the reduction of costs in the future, 12-inch substrates are expected to become an important development direction for silicon carbide substrates.

Silicon carbide substrates are constantly developing towards larger sizes. However, the production technology for large-sized substrates is more difficult and requires advanced production equipment and technical support, which also means that more investment in research and development and production costs are needed. Therefore, enterprises still need to keep making efforts in expanding production capacity and improving product quality.

As silicon carbide materials are widely used in fields such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, and 5G communications, the market demand will continue to grow, providing broad development space for silicon carbide substrate enterprises.

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