China's power semiconductors, opening the golden decade

With the continuous research and development of related products by domestic power semiconductor manufacturers and the continuous expansion of production capacity of foreign giants, power semiconductors have now become a highly competitive "red sea market".

The function of the power semiconductor is mainly to convert electric energy, control the circuit, change the voltage and frequency in the electronic device, DC or AC, etc., and has the ability to handle high voltage and high current.

For quite a long time in the past, the power semiconductor market has been firmly dominated by foreign giants such as Europe, the United States, and Japan. With the development of new energy vehicles in recent years, many local companies have also entered the market. Looking at the market, whether it is the traditional Si power device IGBT, MOSFET, or the third-generation semiconductor represented by SiC, GaN, etc., there are domestic enterprises.

The IGBT market exploded

In 2022, China's IGBT industry will enter an explosive period.

According to the latest statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's new energy vehicles will continue to grow explosively in 2022, with production and sales of 7.058 million units and 6.887 million units, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 96.9% and 93.4%, ranking first in the world for eight consecutive years.

As the core component of new energy vehicles, the demand for IGBT continues to rise. IGBT chip manufacturers include Infineon and ON Semiconductor. The average delivery time of these major manufacturers is more than one year. At the same time, overseas electric vehicle markets such as Europe and the United States have also begun to enter a period of rapid growth. They will give priority to ensuring local supply. Therefore, in the case of tight supply and demand, domestic IGBT manufacturers are accelerating their substitution process in the automotive IGBT field.

At the end of 2021, the IGBT production capacity of manufacturers such as Times Electric, Silan Micro and Hua Hong Semiconductor have been put into production one after another, and the profits of related companies have also increased rapidly. For example: STAR Semiconductor, Silan Micro, BYD Semiconductor, Times Electric, Hongwei Technology, China Resources Micro, New Clean Energy and other semiconductor companies have achieved great improvement in IGBT business, and the car-grade IGBT products have also achieved a great breakthrough in the market.

According to the statistics and analysis of DIGITIMES Research, in 2022, due to the strong demand of the electric vehicle and photovoltaic power generation market, the overall supply-demand gap will reach 13.6% under the condition of limited supply capacity. For the Chinese market, IGBT has become a hotspot in the layout of semiconductors and electric vehicles in recent years, but the localization rate of automotive-grade IGBT products is still low so far.