With the continuous improvement of the requirements for performance, efficiency and miniaturization of semiconductor devices, the star product GaN plays an increasingly important role in the field of power electronics.
Recently, the reporter of the "Into the Industrial Chain" column interviewed Gao Fei, the marketing director of Zhineng Technology, a cutting-edge domestic GaN IDM company, to discuss the survival and development of the current IDM model enterprises in the context of the vigorous development of the third generation of semiconductors represented by gallium nitride.
It has realized the layout of low, medium and high pressure full product lines, providing perfect product matrix support for the company's future growth
It is understood that Zhineng Technology was established in 2018 and focuses on the application of wide bandgap semiconductor gallium nitride power devices in the field of power electronics. In recent years, the company's development momentum has become more and more eye-catching, and has developed a variety of 650V and 900V series GaN power devices, which can be widely used in consumer electronics, industry, photovoltaic energy storage, data centers, new energy vehicles and other fields.
In the low-power scenario of consumer electronics, gallium nitride has become the industry standard in PD fast charging, power adapters and other fields due to its excellent characteristics such as low conduction loss and high switching frequency, which can achieve smaller size and higher power density at a lower cost.
On the demand side, around 2018, gallium nitride fast charging began to rise in the domestic market, from the initial 5W to now updated and iterated to the highest 300W, even in the face of the impact of the global consumer market, but OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Dell and other manufacturers can still bring 3 billion GaN chip market opportunities for gallium nitride companies with 2 billion consumer electronic devices per year; From the perspective of value, with the development trend of high power chargers, the use of gallium nitride devices for a power adapter has gradually increased from 1 to 3, and the value of a single piece can be increased by 2-3 times, which provides sufficient market soil for GaN chip manufacturers to quickly increase volume and achieve breakthroughs from 0 to 1.
Based on the founding team's full understanding of gallium nitride, Genergy chose to take the more mature and low-power consumer electronics field as the entry point, and soon launched multiple models of products such as ZN65C1R400, ZN65C1R1000, ZN65C1R200, ZN65C1R120, and ZN65C1R070 to the market, and has achieved batch shipments to many well-known downstream customers by virtue of its industry-leading technical advantages.
Taking a customer's 240W GaN product as an example, the product adopts a bridged PFC dual-tube flyback all-GaN solution, using a D-GaN ZN65C1R070L with a ZN65C1R0200L GaN chip with a cascode structure independently developed by CANG, which combines the latest high-voltage GaN HEMT and low-voltage silicon MOSFET technology of GENER, which can achieve outstanding reliability and performance. In addition, the gate charge of the device is 8 times lower than that of ordinary silicon MOS, which can greatly reduce the driving and switching losses of the device, and the four-point average energy efficiency reaches 95% at 230Vac and 48V output conditions, which is very good.
Gao Fei, Marketing Director of ZeNex Technology, said: "With the development of PD fast charging and power adapter industry, the contradiction between the supply of larger capacity batteries and the demand for shorter charging time is growing, and GaN power chips can solve the pain points of slow charging and large volume of Si MOSFETs in traditional power adapters due to their characteristics of fast charging, high switching frequency and low conduction loss. In response to the needs of the consumer electronics low-power market, at present, Zhierg Technology has launched a series of first-generation 650V gallium nitride devices to the market, with the company's leading epitaxial technology, self-developed DHTOL, ALT and other equipment, as well as ultra-high and stable yield and other unique advantages, the company can still provide cost-effective products in the fiercely competitive consumer electronics market, which provides important support for the company as a start-up to achieve rapid self-hematopoiesis.
After achieving batch shipments in the low-power market, ZANE has also increased the research and development of high-power products in broader markets such as industrial control, energy storage, communication base stations, servers, and new energy vehicles.
In the field of data centers, more than 40% of data center costs are currently related to electricity (power and cooling), and with the rise of big data and artificial intelligence, data center traffic has accelerated, and the effectiveness and efficiency of traditional silicon solutions have reached a "physical" bottleneck. If GaN MOSFETs are used to replace silicon MOSFETs in the PFC and high-voltage DC/DC portions of data center server power supplies, efficiency gains of up to 10-15% or so can be achieved, resulting in cost reductions of up to $1.9 billion per year; In the field of new energy vehicles, GaN power ICs are mainly used in automotive OBC on-board chargers, DC-DC converters, BMS battery management systems, traction inverters, lidar and other fields, and the trend of automotive electrification is expected to promote automobiles to become the fastest growing segment of GaN power semiconductors in the future, and the global GaN power market size of electric vehicles will grow to $720 million by 2026, and the CAGR is expected to reach 320% from 2020 to 2026.
In terms of medium and high power scenarios, ZANE has also developed a series of GaN products for the market demand of main power and auxiliary power supply in emerging fields such as industry, photovoltaic/energy storage, data center, and new energy vehicles, including ZN65C1R035 and ZN90C1R300, and the product design and performance have reached the international advanced level. At present, our unique technology platform and reliability evaluation methods have been widely recognized by the market, including mass shipment in the field of industrial power supply and server power supply, and joint development and mass production with several leading domestic customers in the field of energy storage. For the automotive market, ZEENG's unique epitaxial device technology can support 900V and 1200V devices, and has been jointly defined and developed with leading Tier1 and automotive OEM customers. Goofy said.
The penetration rate of gallium nitride IDM continues to increase, and the company's production capacity will reach 15,000 pieces/month after the expansion
In recent years, with the continuous development of gallium nitride technology and the further reduction of cost, it has ushered in explosive development in high-frequency, high-power and other scenarios.
In terms of market size, according to Yole, the global power GaN device market size was $185 million in 2022 and is expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 49% in the next six years, reaching $2.04 billion by 2028.
At present, there are many GaN players, which can be mainly divided into two categories: IDM mode and Fabless Foundry mode. Among them, Navitas Semiconductor, EPC, GaN Systems, Transphorm and other leading manufacturers chose to design the process platform with the asset-light Fabless model due to their early start, immature industry in the early stage, relatively small revenue scale and product quantity, and handed over the foundry to TSMC, X-fab and other companies, which is still the mainstream of the power GaN market. Manufacturers such as Innoscience, Infineon, ROHM, STMicroelectronics, China Resources Micro, Silan Micro, and Wingtech Technology chose to enter the gallium nitride market with the IDM model due to their late start or their own good foundation in the IDM industry chain. Although the IDM mode currently accounts for a relatively small proportion of the entire GaN power device market, with the acquisition of GaN Systems by Infineon, it is expected that the proportion of GaN IDM mode in the industry is expected to gradually increase in the future.
In terms of production capacity, the current monthly production capacity of global gallium nitride companies ranges from 2,000 to 15,000 pieces. Among them, Innoscience's production capacity in the field of power gallium nitride is relatively large, reaching 15,000 pieces/month. As of August 2023, Innoscience's GaN chip shipments have successfully exceeded 300 million units. Based on the good expectation of market development, Innoscience is actively expanding production, and it is expected that its monthly production capacity will increase from the current 15,000 pieces/month to 70,000 pieces/month after the completion of the expansion in 2025; In terms of wafer size, 6-inch is still the mainstream of the industry, but major players in the market are also actively expanding 8-inch production capacity, and according to Yole's projection, 8-inch gallium nitride will account for 60% of the total demand for silicon wafers by 2028.
At present, our friends have made certain achievements in the market, and their rapid shipment has contributed to the overall development of the gallium nitride industry. Compared with them, GE Technology is a latecomer, so we need to have our own differentiation route and quickly iterate with highly reliable and low-cost devices to surpass them.
Gao Fei said that based on the IDM mass production platform, Zhineng already has a complete technology and production line in epitaxy, process, packaging, testing and reliability, with a current production capacity of 5,000 pieces/month, and is expected to reach a maximum production capacity of 15,000 pieces/month in the future. Compared with our competitors, first of all, we can improve the iteration efficiency of GaN products very quickly. For example, based on the company's mature IDM platform, we customize a material for customers, which can be completed in only 25 days from project approval to sample delivery; Secondly, in the technical route, both the first and second generation products emphasize long-term reliability, especially dynamic reliability, and we currently believe that in terms of dynamic characteristics, Zhineng has been far ahead of its competitors; Finally, in terms of cost, based on TRONG's own unique epitaxial technology and self-developed test system, we have been far lower than our peers in terms of cost.
It is worth mentioning that with its excellent gallium nitride R&D technology and product mass production capabilities, Zener Technology has previously attracted capital investment from many well-known industries such as Zhongke Chuangxing, Xinchao Group, and Bosch Venture Capital, which has laid a solid industrial foundation for the company's rapid development.
Looking to the future, Gao Fei said:
Zhiergy Technology has been among the world's leading companies in terms of gallium nitride normally open gate structure and vertical channel technology, and has achieved a major breakthrough in the definition of the next generation of vertical products. In the future, the company plans to continue to launch more products in the fields of ultra-high, high-voltage, medium- and low-pressure gallium nitride, and seize more silicon device markets with a complete product matrix. In addition, ZENENG is already preparing for the mass production of 8-inch gallium nitride, and it is expected that the reliability, cost, performance and other technical indicators of related products will be further optimized in the future, so as to achieve a win-win situation with customers at the commercial level with better products while becoming bigger and stronger.
