EV keeps driving the SiC market to a multi-billion-dollar business

Strongly driven by automotive applications, especially in the EV main inverter, there were multiple newly released EVs and announcements in 2020 and 2021, following Tesla’s adoption of SiC. Moreover, the record shipment of Tesla helped SiC devices to reach a scale of $1B in 2021. To fulfill the demand for a long driving range, an 800 V EV is the solution to empower fast DC charging. This is where the 1200 V SiC devices play important roles. As of 2022, BYD’s Han-EV and Hyundai’s Ioniq-5 have enjoyed good sales by offering the fast-charging feature. More OEMs such as Nio, Xpeng, etc. plan to bring SiC EVs to the market in 2022. Apart from automotive, industrial and energy applications represent the markets with a higher than 20% growth rate in our forecast period. For example, the deployment of high-power charging infrastructure with SiC modules, and the growing installation of photovoltaics. In this context, the SiC device market is expected to grow beyond $6B by 2027 – from a $1B business in 2021 – in Yole’s latest forecast.

Leading players are reshaping the ecosystem

This multi-billion-dollar business is also appealing to players to grow their revenue. Among the top SiC device players, STMicroelectronics and Wolfspeed grew their SiC revenue with a YoY higher than 50% in 2021, aligning with the 57% growth in the global SiC device market. Infineon delivered a 126% growth by entering the main inverter business with the base of industrial applications. onsemi also entered the game with strong growth in 2021. As these companies are growing their SiC to a billion-dollar business, the competition in the coming years can also be identified in the supply chain integration. The IDM business model is chosen by major players, and multiple M&A and partnerships in SiC reshaped the SiC ecosystem to secure the wafer supply and to enter the device business to sustain their billion-dollar business objectives in the years to come. The SiC module is the next level for players to compete at, and we have identified new products released to enter automotive, industrial, and energy applications.

Innovation of SiC wafer as of 2022

With SiC wafer as the fundamental of this emerging business, the industry has been working on the supply by expanding wafer capacity. However, there are still many issues to solve to have high-quality wafers and to further improve the challenges of yield loss. One of the question-marks is also about the next generation of manufacturing platforms. With the traction of larger wafer diameter, major wafer suppliers are also developing 8” wafers. As of 2022, there’s an initial volume of 8” wafers for qualification. Additionally, innovative solutions are proposed to improve the quality, the through-put of the wafering process, and the new format of SiC wafers. In our report, we have identified the wafer manufacturing innovations that could change the wafer supply in the years to come.

We invite you to read our Power SiC 2022 report for comprehensive analyses of market dynamics, supply chain evolution, and the latest technology trends for various applications at the wafer, epiwafer, and device levels.