1、 Why to recommend investment in third generation semiconductor materials
1. The downstream subdivision of power semiconductor drives explosive growth of demand, which will drive the application of the third generation semiconductor materials
Power semiconductor is widely used in electronic industry and relatively mature in technology. At present, silicon wafer is used as the substrate, with small band gap width. It is generally accepted by the market that the growth elasticity is not large and the overall scale remains stable. The difference is that we believe that the future power semiconductor will show a trend of high performance, high growth and high concentration, which will drive the application demand of the third generation semiconductor materials. The main reasons are as follows: 1) the growth of downstream emerging industries is significant; 2) the self-sufficiency rate is still low, and the substitution space is huge; 3) future concentration Product fragmentation will improve, and high-end products such as IGBT and MOSFET products will improve performance and technical barriers simultaneously, and downstream dependence on high-end products will increase accordingly. The power semiconductor market is large and the permeability of new semiconductor substrate materials is expected to be further improved due to its high performance.
2. Under the background of the aggravation of trade friction and Moore's law, the underlying material provides the possibility of overtaking the curve
The US sanctions against Huawei have not been reduced, and various technical encirclement and suppression have been intensified. The importance of the underlying materials cannot be ignored. The US will plan to limit Huawei's ability to design and manufacture semiconductors overseas using US technology and software to protect national security. Huawei and its subsidiaries listed in the entity list will be subject to the export management regulations (ear), including the following two Aspects: 1) products directly produced by Huawei and related companies using software and technology on the United States control list (CCL); 2) according to Huawei's design specifications, chips and other products produced by semiconductor manufacturing equipment on CCl list are used overseas in the United States. Such products need to apply for license when shipping to Huawei and its branches.
Moore's law has reached the efficiency limit in the silicon age, and the TSMC has begun to explore research and development at 2nm, and the way to increase the precision of the process is not sustainable. Moore's law has been the golden law for the growth of IC performance over the past few decades. Core content: when the price remains unchanged, the number of elements that can be accommodated on the integrated circuit will double every 18-24 months, and the performance will also be doubled. According to itrs, the traditional silicon transistor has reached the limit of 6 nm. Moore's law, based on silicon, is about to fail. If semiconductor is still developing with Moore's law, it is necessary to form a breakthrough in the underlying material. The United States, EU, Japan and South Korea and other countries and regional organizations have guided industrial development by developing R & D projects. The main breakthrough methods are as follows: 1) the breakthrough of the underlying materials, in addition to gallium nitride and gallium arsenide, the semiconductor technology based on carbon is also continuously breaking through; 2) the high-density integration mode represented by SIP package meets the development demand of performance to some extent.
3. New infrastructure and consumer electronics open up space for domestic demand
The investment in the construction of domestic base station terminal is expanded, and the domestic demand will be greater than that of foreign countries. It is expected that 5g new base stations will reach more than 80W in 2020, most of which will be in the form of "macro base station as the main station and small base station as the auxiliary" network mode. In the context of high frequency and high speed of RF terminal, the permeability of the third generation semiconductor materials will be greatly improved. In 2023, the market scale of Gan RF in base station will reach US $520million, with an annual composite growth rate of 22.8%. With the development of Gan technology and scale, the permeability of Gan PA is expected to increase continuously in the future, and it is expected that the market penetration rate will exceed 85% by 2023. The number of PA (power amplifier) used by 5g macro base station will reach 1843200 in 2019, and 73.728000 in 2020, with a year-on-year growth of 4 times. It is expected that PA based on GaN technology will reach 58% this year from 50% last year.
The scale of consumer electronics market benefits from the increase of fast charging permeability and new energy vehicle electronization rate. Assuming that the fast charging permeability of Gan in the next three years is 1%, 3%, 5%, wearable demand is lower than that of mobile phone end, with the penetration rate of 0.5%, 1% and 2% in three years; we expect that the global Gan charger market size will be RMB 2441 million in 2020 and RMB 87.774 billion in 2022. In the new energy vehicles, the hybrid new energy vehicles account for more than 80% of the total new energy vehicles, and the motor and electric control are the core components. Gan can be used for 48vdc/dc and OBC (on board charger). Yole predicts that the market size in the field will reach $25million by 2023. New energy vehicles are undoubtedly the main driving force of the power electronics market, and also the main competition market for different technology routes (Si, SiC and GaN).
2、 Power semiconductor benefits from the rapid development of emerging downstream areas
1. Power semiconductor is the core component of circuit control
Power IC and power discrete devices account for the majority of power semiconductor. Power devices control the conversion of voltage, current, frequency and AC (AC) DC in electronic equipment, so as to achieve the function of controlling components. Power semiconductor belongs to a subdivision field of semiconductor. It is the core device which can control the circuit by changing the AC / DC of electric energy and the frequency of voltage and current. It can be divided into two categories: Power IC and power discrete devices. Power IC It is an integrated circuit which integrates control circuit and high power device into the same chip. The main application product is power management, which undertakes the functions of transformation, distribution and detection of voltage and current frequency. Because the supply voltage and current required by each module in electronic equipment system are different, power management chip is required to convert and adjust the power required by different components Festival. The power discrete devices mainly include diodes, transistors and thyristors, which occupy an important share. Among them, MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) and IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) have excellent performance, excellent control capability and scope. In recent years, the market scale has grown rapidly and the structure proportion has been improved.
From the perspective of subdivision products, power semiconductor has different functions due to its different performance.
The diode has one-way conductivity, that is, when the anode and cathode of the diode are added with positive voltage, the diode is on. When the anode and cathode are added with reverse voltage, the diode is cut off. Therefore, the on and off of the diode is equivalent to the on and off of the switch.
Thyristor. Thyristors are designed to work at high current and high voltage, and are usually used for rectifying AC current to DC current and adjusting AC current frequency and amplitude. Thyristors can be divided into thyristors (usually called thyristors) and gate off thyristors (GTO), which are all high-power devices.
MOSFET is a kind of transistor. The basic difference between MOSFET and standard bipolar transistor is that the source drain current is controlled by gate voltage, which makes it work more energy saving than bipolar transistor which needs high base current conduction. In addition, it has the function of fast shutdown and allows high frequency switching. Because the working environment can bear higher temperature, it is especially suitable for the power supply design of household appliances, automobiles and PC power supply.
IGBT combines some characteristics of bipolar transistor with MOSFET in a single device. IGBT and MOSFET are significantly different, and they are more challenging to manufacture. IGBT devices can handle large current (such as bipolar transistors) and be controlled by voltage (such as MOSFET), which can be used for high energy applications, such as gearbox, heavy locomotive, large ship propeller, etc.
2. The market scale is growing steadily, and the future incremental space comes from emerging fields
The global market scale has grown steadily, and domestic market demand is expected to maintain a high-speed growth. As the most basic component in electronic equipment, power semiconductor has been widely used in many fields. From the market scale, according to IHS Markit data, the global power semiconductor market size in 2018 is about $40billion, and it is expected that the market size will increase to US $44.1 billion by 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.1%. China is the largest power semiconductor consumer market in the world, and it is expected to maintain high-speed development in the future. According to IHS Markit data, the domestic market size in 2018 will reach US $13.8 billion, with a growth rate of 9.5%, accounting for 35% of the global demand. It is expected that China's power semiconductor will continue to maintain a high growth rate in the future, and the market size in 2021 is expected to reach 159 The annual compound growth rate reached 4.8%. From the incremental source, due to the improvement of downstream new energy and the degree of automobile electronization, the application field of power semiconductor has been expanded from industrial control and consumer electronics to many markets such as photovoltaic, wind power, smart grid, frequency conversion appliances, new energy vehicles, etc. the development of the new field market in the downstream is an important guarantee for the future increment of power semiconductor.
From the perspective of application scope, power semiconductor is needed in any place where the electric energy conversion and signal conversion are required. From the perspective of application power, it can be divided into four application scenarios:
1) Consumer electronics / white appliances, power range 10w-100w:
Power semiconductor is the core component of the charge mechanism, power output and energy efficiency control in consumer electronics. In white appliances, the optimized induction technology and frequency conversion demand also make power semiconductor become the core of intelligent white appliances.
2) New energy vehicles and data communication, power range: 100w-10kw:
The electrification ratio of new energy vehicles has been rapidly increased. At present, compared with fuel vehicle electronic parts, the value of new energy vehicles has increased by more than 5 times. The performance and power efficiency of the new power semiconductor devices are the key to the operation of electric vehicles. The power components are mainly used in inverter and power source control system.
Power semiconductor plays an important role in ensuring uninterrupted power supply and voltage stability in data center, mainly used for rectifying, battery charging and dc/ac inverter. UPS is an essential equipment of IDC, which greatly increases the use of power semiconductor components in server system. The future use of gallium nitride and energy ratio calculation will continue to increase the use of power semiconductor in data center.
3) Renewable energy and transportation, power range 10kw-1000kw:
Renewable energy generation also needs high-power semiconductor, because renewable energy is irregular, and high power generation efficiency is needed to achieve sustainable economic development. Based on the megawatt hour, wind farms need 30 times more power semiconductor value than traditional coal-fired power plants.
The use of IGBT Variable speed drives is increasingly replacing traditional motors in industrial applications because they can significantly improve energy efficiency. Power semiconductor is also crucial for further automation of the plant. The revolution of industry 4.0 largely depends on the increased power and sensor semiconductor content to drive plant robotics.
4) Smart grid and energy storage, power range is over 1000kW:
The consumption of renewable energy (especially wind and solar energy) has brought great challenges to the stability of smart grid, and the difficulty of energy storage also brings greater difficulty to energy storage. Effective energy storage is essential to the transformation of higher contribution to total power generation from renewable energy, and it needs to be converted again effectively, namely power semiconductor.
3. China is the largest consumer market with a self-sufficiency rate of less than 20%
The market share of power IC and power discrete devices is close to half, IGBT and MOSFET are relatively large in discrete devices. In the global power semiconductor market, power IC and power discrete devices almost share the whole market share. According to the data summary and analysis of yole, IHS and Gartner, the global market share of power IC and power devices in 2018 was 54% and 46%, respectively. Among them, MOSFET and IGBT account for 17% and 15% respectively in the market of power discrete devices, and the power diode / rectifier bridge accounts for a little lower proportion, 12%.
In China power semiconductor market, power management IC, MOSFET and IGBT account for 95% of the market share. Among them, the power management IC market accounts for 61% and the largest share, with MOSFET and IGBT market share of 20% and 14% respectively. Thanks to the rapid development of downstream consumer electronics, new energy vehicles and communication industries in recent years, the power management IC market has maintained steady growth. By 2018, the market size of China's power management IC has reached 8.43 billion US dollars. At the same time, with the rapid development of new energy automobile industry, MOSFET and IGBT will also usher in a broad growth space.
China is the largest consumer and importer in the world. With the development of emerging downstream areas, China has obvious domestic alternative space. Due to the wide application of power semiconductor downstream, the market generally believes that the industry growth elasticity is not large and the overall scale remains stable. The difference is that we believe that the future power semiconductor will show a trend of high performance, high growth and high concentration. The main reasons are as follows: 1) the growth of emerging industries in the downstream is significant: the growth of emerging applications represented by automotive electronics in the downstream is further accelerated. Besides the traditional electronic control system, the three parts of electric drive, electric control and battery will be used for power semiconductor The demand of new energy vehicles will increase rapidly. Assuming that the market size of new energy vehicles will reach 15billion yuan in 2025, the increase of electronic components in new energy vehicles is only RMB 5billion yuan according to 30% of the automobile electronization rate; 2) the self-sufficiency rate is still low, and the replacement space is huge: while the domestic demand increases, the self-sufficiency rate is less than 20%, which is from home and abroad Compared with the industrial chain, assuming that the self-sufficiency rate reaches 50%, there is still a market space increment of at least US $5billion in China; 3) the concentration will be further improved in the future, and the product fragmentation will be improved: due to the variety of products, the overall fragmentation is relatively, but some high-end products such as IGBT and MOSFET will be improved The product performance and technical barriers will be promoted simultaneously, and the downstream dependence on high-end products will increase accordingly. The increasing concentration of subdivision areas is an inevitable trend.
3、 The third generation semiconductor material is the cornerstone of the power semiconductor leap forward
1. The third generation semiconductor materials have obvious advantages in performance improvement
The third generation semiconductor materials are represented by silicon carbide and gallium nitride, which has great performance advantages. The third generation semiconductor materials refer to the wide band gap materials with a band gap width significantly greater than Si, mainly including SiC, Gan, diamond, etc. because the band gap width is greater than or equal to 2.3 electron volts, it is also known as wide band gap semiconductor materials. And the first generation