In the next 10 years, driven by the demand for power, photovoltaic (PV) inverters and industrial motor,emerging silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductor market will grow at an alarming rate of 18%. According to the report, to 2022 SiC and GaN power semiconductors will have worldwide sales from $ 143 million in 2012 to $ 2.8 billion. It is predicted that the sales of this market in the next decade will achieve double-digit annual growth rate. SiC's Schottky diodes have been around for over ten years, SiC's metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET), the crystalline field effect transistor (JFET) and bipolar transistors (BJT) in recent years. GaN power semiconductor just enters the market. GaN is a wide band gap materials with similar performance advantages of SiC, but have a greater potential for cost control.
Analysts predict GaN-on-silicon devices with silicon MOSFET, IGBT rectifier to achieve parity and equal performance in 2019 to 2022 ,GaN power market sales will exceed 10 billion mark. SiC Schottky diode is more than $ 100 million in sales in 2012 and is currently the best-selling SiC or GaN devices. This number will increase to nearly doubled in 2022.
Then, SiC MOSFET in sales is expected to reach 400 million U.S. dollars, beyond the Schottky diode to become the best-selling discrete power device type. Reliability, price and performance similar to SiC JFET and SiC BJT sales is expected to reached only half SiCMOSFET. IHS predicts SiC and GaN will have strong growth in the next few years, but compared to a year ago, this prediction is greatly reduced. The main reason for this change is that the global economic downturn situation of the market research companies to lower their shipment forecast power component devices. SiC rate is forecasted to be substantially reduced, because predict that the rapid decline in equipment prices are not so. In contrast, the industry confidence in GaN technology has increased, more and more companies have announced GaN research and development. Transphorm company has become the first GaN-on-silicon device JEDEC qualified.
