3 September 2012

China’s Tianyu expands SiC epi business globally, targeting power devices

Dongguan Tianyu Semiconductor Technology Co Ltd, which claims to be the first manufacturer of silicon carbide (SiC) epitaxial wafers in China, has started to expand its SiC epiwafer business globally after the completion of three contracts in August.

Founded in January 2009 in Songshan Lake National High-tech Industrial Development Zone of Dongguan City, Guangdong province, Tianyu’s facilities cover 20,000m2 in plant area and 10,000m2 in workshop area. Tianyu’s technical team includes six researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences plus 30 engineers working on SiC epitaxial growth technology. Using two SiC chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactors, epiwafer sizes are 4”, 3” and 2”. Production capacity is 10,000 wafers per month (which can be increased if needed).

“SiC substrates are getting better, larger and cheaper; more attention is being paid to this market,” says general manager Li Xiguang. “SiC devices will show more competitiveness in the global market,” he believes, citing a forecast by market analyst firm Yole Developpement that SiC devices will net a billion dollars in revenue within a decade.

Tianyu notes that SiC epiwafers are used in producing Schottky diodes, MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors), JFETs (junction field-effect transistors) and BJTs (bipolar junction transistors) over a wide voltage range, while customized wafers are used for thyristors, GTOs (gate-turn-off devices) and IGBTs (insulated-gate bipolar transistors) over a wider voltage range for medium- to very-high-voltage power conversion system applications. Such devices are used for energy-efficient power electronic devices for many applications, such as air-conditioning, solar and wind turbine inverters, hybrid and electric vehicles, high-speed trains, smart grids and high-voltage DC power transmission. SiC-based devices can reduce energy losses and system size, leading to overall reduced system costs and enhanced reliability, says Tianyu.

Tags: SiC epitaxy SiC power devices

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