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Automotive electrification is driving SiC to accelerate its entry into the car, and the SiC industry chain is also benefiting from rapid development. Among them, the power module packaging technology AMB (active metal brazing) is also favored by the market. Industry insiders said, "As the core supporting material of SiC, the difficulty of promotion is that it is high cost, and it will make breakthroughs in the field of new energy vehicles with SiC on board. "
. In order to meet the development needs of automobile electrification, domestic and foreign companies have long been laying out SiC, and industrial chain companies such as Tianke Heda, Tianyue Advanced, Tongguang Crystal, Century Golden Light, Luxiao Technology, Zhongke Steel Research, TIK Tianrun, Wujinkehua, etc. have emerged; in the AMB field, there are relatively few local companies, but with the help of SiC to accelerate the trend of getting on board, more and more companies are increasing their layout of AMB.
New energy vehicles are becoming the breakthrough for AMB substrates
As automobile electrification quickly enters the 2.0 fast charging stage, more and more pure electric vehicles on the market with a range of more than 500 kilometers, and the market has also put forward higher requirements for fast charging time, which needs to be shortened from the current general 30-60 minutes to 20 Within minutes, some companies even proposed a 5-minute super-speed energy replenishment solution. New changes in the
market have put forward higher requirements for high-voltage charging platforms and power devices. With the advantages of high voltage resistance, high temperature resistance, high efficiency, high frequency, and radiation resistance, SiC has reduced energy loss by half compared to Si-based chips in electronic control scenarios. It is believed that it will replace IGBT and become the core device of the future high-voltage charging platform. It is also a key device for improving the performance and application experience of electric vehicles. It has been popular in the market. The supply chain has also emerged a number of companies such as Tianke Heda, Tianyue Advanced, Tongguang Crystal, Century Golden Light, Luxiao Technology, Zhongke Steel Research, TEK Tianrun, Wujinke, BYD Electronics, etc.
"Although the cost of SiC is higher than that of IGBT now, SiC can save more usage costs in the later stage. From the perspective of the entire life cycle, it adopts SiC is more cost-effective. "A certain industry insider said. Recently, insiders of a domestic power device manufacturer also believe that the production capacity of SiC is gradually coming out. As the production volume continues to expand, the cost will become lower and lower. It is expected that SiC will form an overall cost advantage over IGBT in the next 3-5 years, thereby gaining better popularity. The large-scale launch of
SiC has begun to enter the countdown. It is understood that Tesla Model 3, BYD Han, NIO ES7/ET7/ET5, Xiaopeng G9, Geely Smart Elf, Wuling Kaijie Hybrid Edition and Wuling Star Hybrid Edition are equipped with SiC. In addition, brands such as Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Lexus, Lucid, Karma, etc. have also planned to launch corresponding SiC models. New energy vehicle brands and high-end models have become SiCs The important driving force for getting on the car.
SiC is speeding up, which is driving upstream SiC industry chain companies to accelerate their development, among which AMB will also benefit from rapid development.
It is understood that the copper layer binding force of AMB substrate is between 16N / mm~29N / mm, which is much higher than the 15N / mm of the DBC process, and is more suitable for high-precision ceramic substrate circuit boards. This characteristic also makes AMB substrates have high temperature and high frequency characteristics, and the thermal conductivity is more than 3 times that of DBC alumina. It can reduce the thermal resistance of SiC by about 10% during use, improve battery efficiency, and have a significant improvement effect on SiC on board and improving the application of new energy vehicles.
However, AMB process also has some shortcomings, and its technical difficulty is more difficult to implement The two processes of DBC and DPC are much larger, with high technical requirements, and need to be further improved in terms of yield, materials, etc., which makes the current implementation cost of this technology relatively high. "AMB is considered to be the best matching solution for SiC, but the current cost of AMB substrate is about 3 times that of DBC, which is an important factor hindering its development. "Industry insiders further pointed out, "As SiC continues to make breakthroughs in automobiles, AMB is expected to gain new development opportunities with the development of new energy vehicles, and will accelerate penetration with the continuous breakthrough of new energy vehicle production and sales."
market is spawning a group of domestic supply chain companies.
AMB substrate has obvious supporting advantages for SiC, and the industrial chain has also seen this opportunity. Some industry insiders analyzed that by 2025, the domestic new energy vehicle AMB market size is expected to exceed 6 billion yuan. In addition, there is also a huge demand for AMB in the fields of photovoltaics, wind power, rail transit, etc., and it is foreseeable that the market size exceeds 10 billion. However, due to the high technical threshold of AMB, there are not many companies focusing on AMB technology solutions in the local supply chain. At present, a large number of domestic demands are met by international companies.
It is understood that in the AMB field, the relatively leading companies mainly come from Europe, Japan and South Korea, such as Rogers in Germany. Corporation, Heraeus Technology Group, Japan's Tonghe Holdings (DOWA), Takako Co., Ltd. (NGK), Denka, KYOCERA Corporation, Toshiba Hi-Tech Materials, South Korea's KCC Group, AMOGREENTECH, etc.
Benefiting from the new SiC opportunities, some international companies are planning to expand AMB production. For example, Toshiba Hi-Tech Materials opened its Obit plant last year and began to produce silicon nitride ceramic substrates; in February this year, Rogers officially announced the expansion of AMB substrate production capacity at the Essenbach factory in Germany.
When international companies are actively expanding production, a batch of AMB has also emerged in the local area. Substrate manufacturers, such as Bomin Electronics, Xinzhou Electronics, Huaqing Electronics, Fulehua Semiconductor, Kaiqi Technology, Dehui Electronics, Moshi Technology, Shengda Electronics, Tianyang Electronics, Song Ceramic New Materials, Weisperer Semiconductor, Jingci Semiconductor, Zhongjiang New Materials, BYD, Tongxin Electronics, Licheng Optoelectronics, Fengpeng Electronics, etc.
From the current perspective, a certain number of local companies are developing and producing AMB substrates. In the view of industry insiders, there is still a certain gap in local companies in technology compared with international leading companies. Among them, ceramic substrates, sintering materials, sintering processes, copper-skin copper foil sintering processes, etc. are still testing a company AMB An important indicator of technical strength, some domestic companies are still in the R&D stage. Among them, a few companies such as Bomin Electronics, Xinzhou Electronics, Huaqing Electronics, Fulehua Semiconductor, Dehui Electronics, etc. have begun to stand out. The ceramic lining plate based on AMB process produced by Bomin Electronics Microchip Division is one of the important components in the power module, with advantages such as high thermal conductivity, high reliability, heat resistance, impact resistance, and high performance; related products have been certified in rail transit, industrial grade, automotive grade and other fields. The products have successively carried out model verification and mass production and use in customers such as aviation system, CRRC System, Zhenhua Technology, Guodian Nanrui, and BYD Semiconductor. In terms of production capacity, the current design production capacity of Bomin Electronics production line is 80,000 pieces/month, and is expected to reach 150,000 pieces/month by the end of this year, and is expected to expand to 200,000 pieces/month in 2023.
Xinzhou Electronics is one of the earliest domestic companies to develop AMB technology. It has independent solder and sintering technology and can reach the international leading level. In October 2021, Xinzhou Electronics received an increase of approximately RMB 5 million in Bomin Electronics, and the two parties cooperated in the AMB field. It is understood that after the cooperation between the two parties, the products launched have been recognized by SiC power semiconductor related customers in just half a year.
Huaqing Electronics is the largest and most produced aluminum nitride ceramic substrate company in China. It received strategic investment from BAIC and SAIC. It successfully raised another 180 million yuan at the end of 2021. The financing funds are mainly used for the expansion of aluminum nitride ceramic substrates and the construction of ceramic metallization product production lines.
Fulehua Semiconductor and Dehui Electronics are also one of the few companies in China to form AMB scale. The former relies on the Ferrotec Group to produce 18 million annual power semiconductor copper-clad ceramic carrier plates. In the first half of this year, it plans to invest 1 billion yuan to build an annual production line of 10 million semiconductor power module ceramic substrates. The second phase of the latter project has entered the trial production stage, and will achieve an annual production capacity of 1.44 million pieces/year high-performance ceramic copper clad plates. Currently, IATF16949 international automotive industry quality management system technical specifications are being actively introduced.
It should be noted that since SiC is still in the "mounting" climbing stage, the AMB process is currently mainly used in the IGBT field, such as Bomin Electronics, which takes advantage of AMB to replace the DBC process in IGBT.
