Report examines SiC applications

Compound semiconductor market research company Yole Developpement has just released its annual SiC market report.

Compound semiconductor market research company Yole Developpement has just released its annual SiC market report.

Today, 90% of SiC material production is dedicated to blue/white LEDs and is captive for Cree, Osram and Sumitomo, but changes are expected.

Recent Osram announcements have shown that the company is now involved in blue/white LED production using sapphire rather than SiC.

The company has proved that "thin-film" technology using GaN on removed sapphire substrates can now reach roughly the same luminous efficiency for the final device.

However, it is open to question whether Osram will migrate all production to that technique and give up SiC-based LEDs.

At the same time, Cree proposing to produce packaged LEDs in addition to its current LED dies, going one step beyond in the LED business food-chain and looking for more added value products.

Today SiC-based LED production is in the range of 320,000 2in equivalent substrates.

Production is now migrating onto 3in wafers at Cree.

The total 2in equivalent wafer production for blue/white LED worldwide is estimated to reach 2.8 million in 2005, and so SiC will only represent 12% of the material consumption facing 2.5 million sapphire wafers.

Moreover, all other worldwide players are using sapphire and some of the best available performance has been achieved using it.

So, is there any advantage using SiC today, and will SiC offer a faster route to the ultimate 200 lm/W efficiency required for large white LED production for general illumination applications?.

2004 has seen the involvement of new players in SiC power devices, like Rohm, International Rectifier and ST Microelectronics in Catania.

All are focusing on Schottky diodes, targeting power factor corrector (PFC) for power supplies.

But even if SiC diodes do offer clear improvements over silicon-based diodes, their use necessitates a complete redesign of a power supply.

This means slow market penetration, starting with high-end devices and now migrating to mid-end applications.

The processed wafer volume should reach more than 10,000 2in equivalent pieces in 2005.

The target price for such a component is expected to decrease to $0.20/A, but the current level is around $0.50/A.

Yole forecasts the total accessible market for SiC-based power Schottky diodes in the range of 200 million units per year, only for the high-end applications.

SiC MESFETs and GaN HEMTs are competing on the RF device market as replacement technologies for silicon or GaAs.

Companies like Cree and Rockwell have announced first commercial offers for SiC MESFETs from baseband up to S-band.

At the same time, Cree, Nitronex, Fujitsu, NEC and RFMD are showing impressive results on GaN FET structures.

The challenge for these components is now to achieve long lifetime, high power efficiency (PAE), good reliability, flat frequency response over the whole bandwidth and to be price competitive.

Basestation manufacturers are expecting reliable components in the $1/W price range.

SiC and GaN technologies have to confront this situation by proposing new solutions to break the silicon LDMOS monopoly.

The SiC 05 market report is available now for sale.

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