Is the prospect of Tesla abandoning "carbon" silicon carbide good?

Recently, many enterprises at home and abroad have laid out the silicon carbide industry one after another, which has aroused strong concern in the industry. 

Ningbo Hesheng New material, a holding subsidiary of Hesheng Silicon Industry, has successfully developed silicon carbide semiconductor materials and has the mass production capacity; Yangjie Technology plans to build a 6-inch silicon carbide wafer production line in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province; SK Group announces that its new plant in Busan will start mass production; German wafer foundry X-Fab plans to invest US $200 million to increase silicon carbide semiconductor production. 

But in sharp contrast, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk recently announced that Tesla's next-generation electric car would slash its use of silicon carbide by 75 per cent. 

What is the prospect of silicon carbide application market and how to take the road of domestic silicon carbide industrialization which has just started? 

Broad market prospects. 

"Silicon carbide has a good development prospect as the third generation semiconductor material, and new energy vehicles are its core driving force, followed by photovoltaic and industrial control device applications." 

Zhu Binbin, investment director of time Bole, pointed out. 

"compared with the first generation of semiconductor materials dominated by silicon and the second generation dominated by gallium arsenide, silicon carbide has the advantages of large band gap, high saturated electron mobility and thermal conductivity. it is especially suitable for high-power, high-temperature and high-pressure semiconductor devices." 

Said Chen Xiaolong, a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

Market analyst Yole predicts that the global market for silicon carbide power devices will grow from $1.09 billion in 2021 to $6.297 billion in 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 34 per cent. 

Jibang Consulting expects the market for automotive silicon carbide devices to reach US $3.94 billion in 2026. 

Big international companies are also optimistic about the future of silicon carbide. 

For example, Infineon, a big German semiconductor company, said: "as long as new cars can use silicon carbide, they will no longer use traditional power devices." 

Cost and output are bottlenecks. 

Since the industry is generally optimistic about the silicon carbide market, why should Tesla abandon "carbon"? 

In early March, Elon Musk announced at an investor conference that Tesla's silicon carbide use would be cut by 75 per cent in the future. 

At that time, it was Tesla who took the lead in using silicon carbide on the inverter of the Model 3 main driver, which single-handedly opened up the precedent of silicon carbide "getting on the bus". 

Industry analysis, Tesla abandoned "carbon" and the line, may be out of cost, production capacity and other considerations made a helpless choice. 

Some sources have analyzed that the move has a lot to do with its silicon carbide suppliers, and some people think that the electric car giants are worried about the low quality rate of silicon carbide and insufficient supply capacity. 

The preparation of silicon carbide single crystal has always been a global problem, and the stability of the crystal growth process is difficult to be guaranteed. 

Generally speaking, the whole silicon carbide industry chain can be divided into three types: substrate, epitaxy and device manufacturers. however, in this ring-after-ring production process, the quality rate of each link is not very high, and the substrate is difficult to qualify, resulting in extremely high device cost, unstable performance and difficult to guarantee output. 

New energy vehicles have a great demand for silicon carbide, and the supply has been slow to keep up with the pace of production expansion. 

Some domestic silicon carbide head manufacturers said: "We currently have no surplus silicon carbide production capacity for external supply. Although Tesla shouted 'carbon reduction', in fact, the use of silicon carbide has not decreased year by year, and the market demand is strong." 

Zhang Xiang, dean of the New Energy vehicle Technology Research Institute of Jiangxi New Energy Science and Technology Vocational College, also said: "compared with traditional silicon materials, silicon carbide materials better match the high-voltage platform, and have the advantages of strong pressure resistance, high efficiency and small size." at present, it is still the best choice for the electric drive scheme of new energy vehicles. " 

Thus it can be seen that reducing the use of silicon carbide is only a comprehensive choice of new energy automobile companies out of careful calculation, not a change of course and a fresh start. 

The acceleration of localization. 

Silicon carbide has a broad application prospect, and domestic enterprises have also set their sights on this track. 

"but silicon carbide crystal growth is extremely difficult. In the 1990s, only a few developed countries mastered crystal growth and processing technology. China's silicon carbide technology started relatively late. At present, domestic enterprises are catching up in the field of silicon carbide." 

Chen Xiaolong said. 

Gong Ruijiao, an analyst at Jibang Consulting compound Semiconductor, said that taking the 6-inch silicon carbide substrate as an example, the rate of good products is about 40% at home and 60% to 70% overseas. 

In addition, silicon carbide semiconductor field effect transistors are divided into plane type and groove type. Under the same conditions, groove type has more cost and performance advantages, but domestic enterprises need to cross the huge patent gap. 

Industry insiders pointed out that the current downstream demand for silicon carbide is still strong, especially the production capacity of automotive grade silicon carbide substrate is still tight, and the domestic industry calls for the domestic replacement of silicon carbide is very high. 

The country is also aware of this problem and proposes in the 14th five-year Plan and the outline of the long-term goals of 2035 that it will accelerate the industrialization of new materials and technologies of the third generation semiconductors represented by silicon carbide and gallium nitride. give birth to a number of fast-growing new materials enterprises. 

What is more noteworthy is that there are already signs of banning the sale of highly sophisticated equipment in industries such as silicon carbide to China, so the road of localization of silicon carbide is imperative. 

Now the industry has taken action to lay out the silicon carbide industry and join the localization team of silicon carbide. 

According to incomplete statistics, the investment of new projects and contracted silicon carbide projects in China exceeded 47.6 billion yuan in 2022, while the figure was only 5 billion yuan in 2018. 

Industry insiders pointed out that with the intensive release of production capacity in the next two or three years, the supply and demand of the domestic silicon carbide market will tend to balance, and the cost will accelerate. 

At that time, the domestic market competition for low-end silicon carbide products may be more fierce, and the industry needs to focus on technological breakthroughs, achieve corner overtaking and autonomous control, narrow the gap with international giants, and strive to get a share of the high-end silicon carbide market.